HOME  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
OF  MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

No.  97 


Editors : 

HERBERT  FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 
Prof.  GILBERT  MURRAY,  Litt.D., 

LL.D.,  F.B.A. 
PROF.  J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON,  M.A. 
PROF.  WILLIAM  T.  BREWSTER,  M.A. 


A  complete  classified  list  of  the  volumes  of  The 
Home  University  Library  already  published 
will  be  found  at  the  back  of  this  book. 


MILTON 


BY 

JOHN  BAILEY 

AUTHOR  OF  "THR  CLAIMS   OF   FRENCH   POETRY."   "  DR.   JOHNSON   AND 
HIS   CIRCLE,"   ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY   HOLT   AND    COMPANY 

LONDON 
WILLIAMS   AND    NORGATE 


fn?  35Bi 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I      INTRODUCTORY    . 

ii    milton's  life  and  character 

III  THE  EARLIER   POEMS    . 

IV  PARADISE  LOST      .  . 

V      PARADISE    REGAINED   AND    SAMSON 
NISTES      .... 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
INDEX 


AQO- 


PAGK 

7 

23 

89 

142 

196 

250 
254 


Milton  !  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour : 

England  hath  need  of  thee :  she  is  a  fen 

Of  stagnant  waters :  altar,  sword  and  pen, 

Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 

Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 

Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men ; 

Oh  !   raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again ; 

And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power. 

Thy  soul  was  like  a  Star,  and  dwelt  apart: 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea 

Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 

So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way, 

In  cheerful  godliness ;  and  yet  thy  heart 

The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay. 

Wordsworth. 

0  Mighty-mouth'd  inventor  of  harmonies. 
O  skill'd  to  sing  of  Time  or  Eternity, 
God-gifted  organ-voice  of  England, 
Milton,  a  name  to  resound  for  ages ; 
Whose  Titan  angels,  Gabriel,  Abdiel, 
Starr'd  from  Jehovah's  gorgeous  armouries, 
Tower,  as  the  deep-doomed  empyrean 
Rings  to  the  roar  of  an  angel  onset — 
Me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness, 
The  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse  and  cedar  arches 
Charm,  as  a  wanderer  out  in  ocean, 
Where  some  refulgent  sunset  of  India 
Streams  o'er  a  rich  ambrosial  ocean  isle, 
And  crimson-hued  the  stately  palm-woods 
Whisper  in  odorous  heights  of  even. 

Tennyson. 


MILTON 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTORY 

When  a  man  spends  a  day  walking  in 
hilly  country  he  is  often  astonished  at  the 
new  shape  taken  on  by  a  mountain  when  it 
is  looked  at  from  a  new  point  of  view.  Some- 
times the  change  is  so  great  as  to  make  it 
almost  unrecognizable.  He  who  has  seen 
Snowdon  from  Capel-Curig  is  reluctant  to 
admit  that  what  he  sees  from  Llanberis  is 
the  same  mountain  :  he  who  has  seen  the 
Langdale  Pikes  from  Glaramara  is  amazed 
at  their  beauty  as  he  gazes  at  them  from 
the  garden  at  Low  Wood.  These  are  extreme 
cases.  But  to  a  less  degree  every  traveller 
among  the  mountains  is  experiencing  the 
same  thing  all  day.  He  finds  the  eternal 
hills  the  most  plastic  of  forms.  At  each 
change  in  his  own  position  there  is  a  change 
in  the  shape  of  a  mountain  under  which  he 
is  passing.  He  may  keep  his  eye  fixed  upon 
it  but  insensibly,  as  he  watches,  the  long 
7 


8  MILTON 

chain  will  become  a  vertical  peak,  the  jagged 
precipice  a  round  green  slope. 

Much  the  same  process  goes  on  as  the 
generations  of  men  pass  on  their  way,  with 
their  eyes  fixed,  as  they  cannot  help  being, 
on  the  great  human  heights  of  their  own  and 
earlier  days.  Many  of  these  look  great  only 
when  you  are  close  to  them.  At  a  little 
distance  they  are  seen  to  be  small  and  soon 
they  disappear  altogether.  The  true  moun- 
tains remain  but  they  do  not  keep  the  same 
shape.  Each  succeeding  generation  sees  the 
peaks  of  humanity  from  a  new  point  of  view 
which  cannot  be  exactly  the  same  as  that  of 
its  predecessor.  Each  age  reshapes  for  itself 
its  conception  of  art,  of  poetry,  of  religion,  and 
of  human  life  which  includes  them  all.  Of 
some  of  the  masters  in  each  of  these  worlds 
it  feels  that  they  belong  not  to  their  own 
generation  only  but  to  all  time  and  so  to 
itself.  It  cannot  be  satisfied,  therefore,  with 
what  its  predecessors  have  said  about  them. 
It  needs  to  see  them  again  freshly  for  itself, 
and  put  into  words  so  far  as  it  can  its  own 
attitude  towards  them. 

That  is  the  excuse  for  the  new  books  which 
will  always  be  written  every  few  years  about 
Hebrew  Religion,  or  Greek  Art,  or  the  French 
Revolution,    or   about   such   men   as   Plato, 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

St.  Paul,  Shakspeare,  Napoleon.  It  is  the 
excuse  even  for  a  much  humbler  thing,  for 
the  addition  of  a  volume  on  Milton  to  the 
Home  University  Library.  The  object  of 
this  Library  is  not,  indeed,  to  say  anything 
startlingly  new  about  the  great  men  with 
whom  it  deals.  Rather  the  contrary,  in 
fact :  for  to  say  anything  startlingly  new 
about  Shakspeare  or  Plato  would  probably 
be  merely  to  say  what  is  absurd  or  false. 
The  main  outlines  of  these  great  figures  have 
long  been  settled,  and  the  man  who  writes 
a  book  to  prove  that  Shakspeare  was  not  a 
great  dramatist,  or  was  an  exact  and  lucid 
writer,  is  wasting  his  own  time  and  that  of 
his  readers.  The  mountain  may  change  its 
aspect  from  hour  to  hour,  but  when  once  we 
have  ascertained  that  it  is  composed  of 
granite,  that  matter  is  settled,  and  there  is 
no  use  in  arguing  that  it  is  sandstone  or 
basalt.  The  object  of  such  volumes  as  those 
of  this  Library  is  no  vain  assault  on  the 
secure  judgment-seat  of  the  world,  no  hope- 
less appeal  against  the  recorded  and  accepted 
decrees  of  time.  It  is  rather  to  re-state 
those  decrees  in  modern  language  and  from 
the  point  of  view  of  our  own  day  :  to  show, 
for  instance,  how  Plato,  though  no  longer  for 
us  what  he  was  for  the  Neo-Platonists,  is 

A2< 


10  MILTON 

still  for  us  the  most  moving  mind  of  the 
race  that  more  than  all  others  has  moved 
the  mind  of  the  world;  how  Milton,  though 
no  longer  for  us  a  convincing  justifier  of  the 
ways  of  God  to  men,  is  still  a  figure  of  tran- 
scendent interest,  the  most  lion-hearted,  the 
loftiest-souled,  of  Englishmen,  the  one  con- 
summate artist  our  race  has  produced,  the 
only  English  man  of  letters  who  in  all  that 

I  is  known  about  him,  his  life,  his  character, 
his  poetry,  shows  something  for  which  the 
only  fit  word  is  sublime. 

There  was  much  else  beside,  of  course. 
The  sublime  is  very  near  the  terrible,  and 
the  terrible  is  often  not  very  far  removed 
from  the  hateful.  Dante  giving  his  "  daily 
dreadful  line "  to  the  private  and  public 
enemies  with  whom  he  grimly  populates  his 
hell  is  not  exactly  an  amiable  or  attractive 
figure.  Still  less  so  is  Milton  in  those  prose 
pamphlets  in  which  he  passes  so  rapidly, 
and  to  us  so  strangely,  from  the  heights  of 
heaven  to  the  gutter  mud  of  scurrilous  person- 
alities. This  is  a  disease  from  which  our 
more  amiable  age  seems  at  last  to  have 
delivered  the  world.  But  Milton  has  at 
least  the  excuse  of  a  long  and  august  tradition, 
from  the  days  of  Demosthenes,  equally  profuse 
of  a  patriotism  as  lofty  and  of  personalities  as 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

base  as  Milton's,  to  those  of  a  whole  line  of 
the  scholars  of  the  Renaissance  who  lived 
with  the  noblest  literature  of  the  world  and 
wrote  of  each  other  in  the  language  of  Billings- 
gate fishwives.  So  the  sublimity  of  his  life 
is  wholly  that  of  an  irresistible  will,  set  from 
the  first  on  achieving  great  deeds  and 
victoriously  achieving  them  in  defiance  of 
adverse  men  and  fates.  But  this  is  quite 
compatible  with  qualities  the  reverse  of 
agreeable.  It  is  the  business  of  sublimity 
to  compel  amazed  admiration,  not  to  be  a 
pleasant  companion.  Milton  rejoicing  over 
the  tortures  bishops  will  suffer  in  hell,  Milton 
insulting  Charles  I,  Milton  playing  the  tyrant 
to  his  daughters,  none  of  these  are  pleasant 
pictures.  But  such  incidents,  if  perhaps 
unusually  grim  in  the  case  of  Milton,  are 
apt  to  happen  with  Olympians.  Experience 
shows  that  it  is  generally  best  to  listen  to 
their  thunder  from  a  certain  distance. 

Such  limitations  must  not  be  ignored. 
But  neither  must  they  be  unduly  pressed. 
The  important  thing  about  the  sun  is  not  its 
spots  but  its  light  and  heat.  No  great  poet 
in  all  history,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Dante,  has  so  much  heat  as  Milton.  In  prose 
and  verse  alike  he  burns  and  glows  with  fire. 
At  its  worst  it  is  a  fire  of  anger  and  pride,  at 


12  MILTON 

its  best  a  fire  of  faith  in  liberty,  justice, 
righteousness,  God.  Of  the  highest  of  all 
fires,  the  white  flame  of  love,  it  has  indeed 
little.  Milton  had  no  Beatrice  to  teach  him 
how  to  show  men  the  loveliness  of  the  divine 
law,  the  beauty  of  holiness.  He  could  de- 
scribe the  loss  of  Paradise  and  even  its 
recovery,  but  its  eternal  bliss,  the  bliss  of 
those  who  live  in  the  presence  of 

l'amor  che  move  il  sole  e  Paltre  stelle, 

he  could  not  describe.  To  do  that  required 
one  who  had  seen  the  Vita  Nuova  before  he 
saw  the  Inferno.  In  la  sua  volontade  6  nostra 
pace.  So  Dante  thought :  but  not  altogether 
so  Milton.  It  is  not  a  difference  of  theological 
opinion  :  it  is  a  difference  of  temper.  For 
Dante  the  "  will  of  God  "  at  once  suggested 
both  the  apostolic  and  the  apocalyptic  love, 
joy,  peace,  the  supreme  and  ultimate  beatific 
vision.  Bitter  as  his  life  on  earth  had  been, 
no  man  ever  suffering  more  from  evil  days  and 
evil  tongues,  no  man  ever  more  bitterly  con- 
scious of  living  in  an  evil  and  perverse  genera- 
tion, he  had  yet  within  him  a  perpetual 
fountain  of  peace  in  the  thought  of  God's 
will,  and  the  faith  that  he  was  daily  advancing 
nearer  to  the  light  of  heaven  and  the  divine 
presence.     Milton,  a  sincere  believer  in  God 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

if  man  ever  were,  must  also  at  times  have 
had  his  moments  of  beatific  vision  in  which 
the  invisible  peace  of  God  became  more  real 
than  the  storms  of  earthly  life  and  the  vile- 
ness  of  men.  Indeed,  we  see  the  traces  of 
such  moments  in  the  opening  of  Comus,  in 
the  concluding  lines  of  Lycidas,  in  the  sus- 
tained ecstasy  of  At  a  Solemn  Music.  But 
they  appear  to  have  been  only  moments. 
Milton  was  a  lifelong  Crusader  who  scarcely 
set  foot  in  the  Holy  Land.  The  will  of  God 
meant  for  him  not  so  much  peace  as  war. 
He  is  a  prophet  rather  than  a  psalmist. 
"  Woe  is  me,  my  Mother,  that  thou  hast  born 
me  a  man  of  strife  and  contention,"  he 
himself  complains  in  the  Reason  of  Church 
Government.  He  was  not  much  over  thirty 
when  he  wrote  those  words  :  and  they  re- 
mained true  of  him  to  the  end.  For  twenty 
years  the  strife  was  active  and  public;  ever, 
in  appearance  at  least,  more  and  more  suc- 
cessful :  then  for  the  final  fourteen  it  became 
the  impotent  wrath  of  a  caged  and  wounded 
lion.  Never  for  a  moment  did  his  soul  bow 
to  the  triumph  of  the  idolaters  :  but  neither 
could  it  forget  them,  nor  make  any  permanent 
escape  into  purer  air.  Paradise  Lost,  Paradise 
Regained  and  Samson,  especially  the  last,  are 
all  plainly  the  works  of  a  man  conscious  of 


14  MILTON 

having  been  defeated  by  a  world  which  he 
could  defy  but  could  not  forget.  Sublimely 
certain  of  the  righteousness  of  his  cause,  he 
has  no  abiding  certainty  of  its  victory.  He 
hears  too  plainly  the  insulting  voices  of  the 
sons  of  Belial,  and  broods  in  proud  and  angry 
gloom  over  the  ruin  of  all  his  hopes,  personal, 
political  and  ecclesiastical.  And  as  his  re- 
ligion was  a  thing  of  intellect  and  conscience, 
not  a  thing  of  spiritual  vision,  he  cannot  make 
for  himself  that  mystical  trans-valuation  of 
all  earthly  doings  in  the  light  of  which  the 
struggles  of  political  and  ecclesiastical  parties 
are  seen  as  things  temporary,  trivial  and  of 
little  account. 

Such  are  the  limitations  of  Milton.  They 
are  those  of  a  man  who  lived  in  the  time  ui  a 
great  national  struggle,  deliberately  chose  his 
own  side  in  it,  and  from  thenceforth  saw 
nothing  in  the  other  but  folly,  obstinacy  and 
crime.  He  has  in  him  nothing  whatever  of 
the  universal,  and  universally  sympathetic, 
insight  of  Shakspeare.  And  he  has  paid  the 
price  of  his  narrowness  in  the  open  dislike, 
or  at  best  grudging  recognition,  of  that  half 
of  the  world  which  is  not  Puritan  and  not 
Republican,  and  still  looks  upon  history, 
custom,  law  and  loyalty  with  very  different 
eyes   from  his.     But   those  who  exact  that 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

penalty    do    themselves    at    least    as    much 
injustice    as    they    do    Milton.     To    deprive 
ourselves  of  Milton  because  we  are  neither 
Puritan  moralists   nor  Old   Testament  poli- 
ticians is  an  act  of  intellectual  suicide.     The 
wise,  as  the  world  goes  on,  may  differ  more 
and  more  from  some  of  Milton's  opinions. 
They  can  never  escape  the  greatness  either  of 
the  poet  or  of  the  man.     Men's  appreciation 
of  Milton  is  almost  in  proportion  to  their  in- 
stinctive understanding  of  what  greatness  Is. 
Other  poets,  perhaps,  have  things  of  greater 
beauty  :    none  in  English,  none,  perhaps,  in 
any  language,  fills  us  with  a  more  exalting 
conviction  of  the  greatness  of  human  life. 
No  man  rises  from  an  hour  with  Milton  with- 
out feeling  ashamed  of  the  triviality  of  his 
life  and  certain  that  he  can,  if  he  will,  make 
it  less  trivial.     It  is  impossible  not  to  catch 
from   him    some    sense    of   the    high   issues, 
immediate    and    eternal,    on    which    human 
existence  ought  to  be  conscious  that  it  hangs. 
The  world  will  be  very  old  before  we  can 
spare  a  man  who  can  render  us  this  service. 
We  have  no  one  in  England  who  renders  it  so 
imperiously  as  Milton. 

This  part  of  his  permanent  claim  upon  our 
attention  belongs  to  all  that  we  know  of  him, 
to  everything  in  his  life  so  far  as  it  is  recorded, 


16  MILTON 

even  to  his  prose,  where  its  appearances  are 
occasional,  as  well  as  to  his  verse,  where  it  is 
continuous  and  omnipresent.  It  is,  of  course, 
in  connection  with  the  last  that  we  are  most 
conscious  of  it  and  that  it  is  most  important. 
After  all,  the  rest  would  have  been  unknown 
or  forgotten  if  he  had  not  been  a  great  poet. 
But  it  is  not  merely  by  his  force  of  mind  and 
character,  nor  merely  by  the  influence  they 
have  upon  us  through  the  poetry,  that  he 
claims  our  attention  to-day.  Altogether  in- 
dependently of  that,  the  study  of  Milton  is 
of  immense  and  special  value  to  Englishmen. 
Except  in  poetry  our  English  contribution  to 
the  life  of  the  arts  in  Europe  has  been  com- 
paratively small.  That  very  Puritanism  which 
had  so  much  to  do  with  the  greatness  of 
Milton  has  also  had  much  to  do  with  the 
general  failure  of  Englishmen  to  produce 
fine  art,  or  even  to  care  about  it,  or  so  much 
as  recognize  it  when  they  see  it.  Now  Milton, 
Puritan  as  he  was,  was  always,  and  not  least 
in  his  final  Puritan  phase,  a  supreme  artist. 
Poetry  has  been  by  far  our  greatest  artistic 
achievement  and  he  is  by  far  our  greatest 
poetic  artist.  No  artist  in  any  other  field, 
no  Inigo  Jones  or  Wren,  no  Purcell,  no 
Reynolds  or  Turner,  holds  such  unquestioned 
eminence  in  any  other  art  as  he  in  his.     If 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

the  world  asks  us  where  to  look  for  the  genius 
of  England,  so  far  as  it  has  ever  been  ex- 
pressed on  paper,  we  point,  of  course,  un- 
hesitatingly to  Shakspeare.  But  Shakspeare 
is  as  inferior  to  Milton  in  art  as  he  is  superior 
in  genius.  His  genius  will  often,  indeed, 
supply  the  place  of  art ;  but  the  possession  of 
powers  that  are  above  art  is  not  the  same 
thing  as  being  continuously  and  consciously 
a  great  artist.  We  can  all  think  of  many 
places  in  his  works  where  for  hundreds  of 
lines  the  most  censorious  criticism  can  scarcely 
wish  a  word  changed ;  but  we  can  also  think 
of  many  in  which  the  least  watchful  cannot 
fail  to  wish  much  changed  and  much  omitted. 
"  Would  he  had  blotted  a  thousand  "  is  still 
a  true  saying,  and  its  truth  known  and  felt 
by  all  but  the  blindest  of  the  idolaters  of 
Shakspeare.  No  one  has  ever  uttered  such  ^  , 
a  wish  about  the  poetry  of  Milton.  This  is  yU"n 
not  the  place  to  anticipate  a  discussion  of 
it  which  must  come  later.  But,  in  an  intro- 
ductory chapter  which  aims  at  insisting  upon 
the  present  and  permanent  importance  of 
Milton,  it  is  in  place  to  point  out  the  immense 
value  to  the  English  race  of  acquaintance 
with  work  so  conscientiously  perfect  as 
Milton's.  English  writers  on  the  whole  have 
had   a   tendency   to   be   rather    slipshod   in 


18  MILTON 

expression  and  rather  indifferent  to  the  finer 
harmonies  of  human  speech,  whether  as  a 
thing  of  pure  sound  or  as  a  thing  of  sounds 
which  have  more  than  mere  meaning,  which 
have  associations.  Milton  as  both  a  lover  of 
music  and  a  scholar  is  never  for  a  moment 
unconscious  of  either.  It  would  scarcely  be 
going  too  far  to  say  that  there  is  not  a  word 
in  his  verse  which  owes  its  place  solely  to  the 
fact  that  it  expresses  his  meaning.  All  the 
words  accepted  by  his  instinctive  or  deliberate 
choice  were  accepted  because  they  provided 
him  with  the  most  he  could  obtain  of  three 
qualities  which  he  desired  :  the  exact  expres- 
sion of  the  meaning  needed  for  the  immediate 
purpose  in  hand,  the  associations  fittest  to 
enhance  or  enrich  that  meaning,  the  rhythmical 
or  musical  effect  required  for  the  verse.  The 
study  of  his  verse  is  one  that  never  exhausts 
itself,  so  that  the  appreciation  of  it  has  been 
called  the  last  reward  of  consummate  scholar- 
ship. But  the  phrase  does  Milton  some  in- 
justice. It  is  true  that  the  scholar  tastes 
again  and  again  in  Milton  some  flavour  of 
association  or  suggestion  which  is  not  to  be 
perceived  by  those  who  are  not  scholars,  and 
it  is  also  true  that  he  consciously  understands 
what  he  is  enjoying  more  than  they  possibly 
can.     But  neither   Milton's    nor   any    other 


INTRODUCTORY  19 

great  art  makes  its  main  appeal  to  learning. 
What  does  that  is  not  art  at  all  but  pedantry. 
Those  who  have  never  read  a  line  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  poets  certainly  miss  many  pleasures 
in  reading  Milton,  but,  if  they  have  any  ear  for 
poetry  at  all,  they  do  not  miss  either  the  mind 
or  the  art  of  Milton.  The  unconquerable  will, 
the  high  soaring  soul,  are  everywhere  audibly 
present :  and  so,  even  to  those  who  have  little 
reading  and  no  knowledge  at  all  of  matters 
of  rhythm  or  metre,  are  the  grave  Dorian 
music,  the  stately  verses  rolling  in  each  after 
the  other  like  great  ocean  waves  in  eternal 
difference,  in  eternal  sameness.  The  ignorant 
ear  hears  and  rejoices,  with  a  delight  that 
passes  understanding,  as  the  ignorant  eye  sees 
a  fine  drawing  or  a  piece  of  Greek  sculpture 
and  without  understanding  enjoys,  learns,  and 
unconsciously  grows  in  keenness  of  sight.  To 
live  with  Milton  is  necessarily  to  learn  that 
the  art  of  poetry  is  no  triviality,  no  mere 
amusement,  but  a  high  and  grave  thing,  a 
thing  of  the  choicest  discipline  of  phrase,  the 
finest  craftsmanship  of  structure,  the  most 
nobly  ordered  music  of  sound.  The  ordinary 
reader  may  not  be  conscious  of  any  such 
lessons :  but  he  learns  them  nevertheless. 
And  from  no  one  else  in  English  can  he  learn 
them  so  well  as  from  Milton. 


20  MILTON 

For  these  reasons,  these  and  others,  we 
must  cling  to  our  great  epic  poet,  Shelley's 
"  third  among  the  sons  of  light."  He  is  not 
easy  reading  :  the  greatest  seldom  are  :  but 
as  with  all  the  greatest,  each  new  reading  is 
not  only  easier  than  the  last  but  fuller  of 
matter  for  thought,  wonder  and  delight.  At 
each  new  reading,  too,  the  things  in  him  that 
belonged  to  his  own  age,  the  Biblical  literalism, 
the  theological  prepossessions,  the  political 
partisanship,  recede  more  and  more  into  the 
background  and  leave  us  freer  to  enjoy  the 
things  which  belong  to  all  time.  And  to  all 
peoples.  Milton  is,  indeed,  intensely  English 
and  could  not  have  been  anything  but  an 
Englishman,"  His  profound  conviction  of  the 
greatness  of  moral  issues,  and  his  passionate 
love  of  liberty,  have  both  been  characteristic 
of  the  Englishmen  of  whom  England  is  most 
proud.  Till  lately  too,  at  any  rate,  we  should 
have  said  that  his  fierce  individualism,  intel- 
lectual and  political,  was  English  too.  But  his 
mind  and  soul,  stored  with  the  gathered  riches 
of  many  languages  and  of  an  inward  experi- 
ence far  too  intense  to  be  confined  by  national 
limitations,  reach  out  to  a  world  wider 
altogether  than  this  island,  wider  even  than 
Europe.  In  Samson  Agonistes  it  is  hard  to 
say  who  is  more  vividly  present,  the  English 


INTRODUCTORY  21 

politician,  the  Greek  tragedian,  or  the  Hebrew 
prophet.  And  in  one  sense  Paradise  Lost  is 
the  most  universal  of  all  poems.  Indeed,  that 
word  may  be  applied  to  it  in  its  strictest 
meaning,  for  the  field  of  Milton's  action  is 
not  Greece,  or  Italy,  or  England,  or  even  the 
whole  earth;  it  is  the  universe  itself.  That 
is  one  of  its  difficulties  :  but  it  is  also  a 
source  of  the  uplifting  and  enlarging  quality 
which  is  peculiarly  Miltonic.  With  him  we 
are  conscious  of  treading  no  petty  scene.  We 
have  in  some  respects  travelled  far  from 
Milton's  way  both  of  stating  and  of  solving 
his  problem,  but  nevertheless  it  is  still  with 
us  to-day  and  always  :  the  problem  of  man's 
origin  and  destiny,  of  the  ways  of  God  to 
men.  And  though  Milton  is  more  hampered 
by  literal  belief  in  a  particular  theological 
legend  than  the  authors  of  the  Book  of  Job 
and  the  Prometheus  Vinctus,  yet,  like  these,  he 
shows  that  a  great  mind  and  soul  will  leave 
the  imprint  of  power  and  truth  on  the  most 
incredible  primitive  story.  To  read  his  great 
poem,  or  indeed  any  of  his  poems,  is  to  live 
for  a  while  in  the  presence  of  one  of  those 
royal  souls,  those  natural  kings  of  men,  whom 
Plato  felt  to  be  born  to  rule  and  inspire  their 
fellows  :  and  the  heroic  temper  of  the  man  is 
in  England  less  rare  than  the  consummate 


22  MILTON 

perfection  of  art  which  has  eternalized  its 
utterance.  This  is  Milton  :  and,  though  we 
may  be  too  weak  to  read  him  often,  we 
shall  never  be  able  to  do  without  him,  never 
think  of  him  without  an  added  strength  and 
exaltation  of  spirit. 


CHAPTER  II 

milton's  life  and  character 

We  know  far  more  about  Milton  than  about 
any  other  English  poet  born  so  long  ago. 
There  are  three  reasons  for  this.  One  is  that 
from  his  earliest  years  he  was  very  much 
interested  in  himself,  was  quite  aware  that 
he  was  a  man  above  the  stature  of  ordinary 
men,  and  had  the  most  deliberate  intention 
and  expectation  of  doing  great  things.  Con- 
sequently he  is  not  only,  like  most  good  poets, 
fond  of  bringing  more  or  less  concealed  auto- 
biography into  his  poetry,  but  still  more  in 
his  prose  works  he  inclines  often  to  insert 
long  passages  about  himself,  his  studies, 
travels,  projects,  friends  and  character.  It 
is  these  more  than  anything  else  which  now 
keep  those  works  alive  :  and,  coming  from  a 
man  so  proudly  truthful  as  Milton  evidently 
was,  they  are  of  the  greatest  interest  and 
value.  The  second  reason  why  we  know  so 
much  about  him  is  that  he  played  an  active 
part  in  politics,  a  far  more  certain  way  of 
23 


s/ 


24  MILTON 

attracting  contemporary  attention  in  England 
than  writing  Hamlet  or  building  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral.  And  the  third  is  that  his  life 
has  been  made  the  subject  of  perhaps  the 
most  "minute  and  elaborate  biography  in  the 
language.  Mr.  Masson's  labours  enable  us 
to  know,  if  we  choose,  every  fact,  however 
insignificant,  which  the  most  laborious  in- 
vestigation can  discover,  not  only  about 
Milton  himself  but,  one  may  almost  say,  about 
everybody  who  was  ever  for  five  minutes  in 
Milton's  company. 

From  this  mass  of  material,  all  that  can  be 
touched  here  is  a  few  of  the  most  salient  facts 
of  the  life  and  the  most  striking  features  of 
the  character. 

Milton's  life  is  naturally  divided  into  three 
periods.  The  first  is  that  of  his  education 
and  early  poems.  It  extends  from  his  birth 
in  1608  to  his  return  from  his  foreign  travels 
in  1639.  The  second  is  that  of  his  political 
activity,  and  extends  from  1639  to  the  Restora- 
tion. The  third  is  that  of  Paradise  Lost, 
Paradise  Regained  and  Samson.  It  concludes 
with  his  death,  on  November  8,  1674. 

Milton  was  born  on  December  9,  1608,  at 
a  house  in  Bread  Street,  Cheapside.  The 
house  is  gone,  but  the  street  is  a  very  short 
one,  and  it  is  still  pleasant  to  step  out  of  the 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  25 

roar  of  Cheapside  into  its  quietness,  and  think 
that  there,  on  the  left,  close  by,  under  the 
shadow  of  Bow  Church,  was  born  the  greatest 
poet  to  whom  the  greatest  city  of  the  modern 
world  has  given  birth.  London  ought  to 
hold  fast  to  the  honour  of  Milton,  for  his 
honour  is  peculiarly  hers.  He  was  not  only 
born  a  Londoner  but  lived  in  London  nearly 
all  his  life.  And  his  mind  is  throughout  that 
of  the  citizen.  Neither  agriculture  nor  sport 
means  much  to  him;  and,  much  as  he  loves 
the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  op  en  country, 
his  allusions  to  them  are  those  of  the  delighted 
but  still  wondering  alien,  not  those  of  the 
native.  None  is  more  often  quoted  than  the 
passage  in  the  ninth  book  of  Paradise  Lost — 

"  As  one  who,  long  in  populous  city  pent, 
Where  houses  thick  and  sewers  annoy  the 

air, 
Forth    issuing    on    a    summer's    morn,    to 

breathe 
Among  the  pleasant  villages  and  farms 
Adjoined,  from  each  thing  met  conceives 

delight — 
The  smell  of  grain,  or  tedded  grass,  or  kine, 
Or  dairy,  each  rural  sight,  each  rural  sound — 
If  chance  with  nymph-like  step  fair  virgin 

pass, 
What  pleasing  seemed  for  her  now  pleases 

more, 
She  most,  and  in  her  look  sums  all  delight." 


26  MILTON 

And  the  secret  of  its  charm  obviously  lies 
partly  in  the  note  of  a  personal  experience. 
Just  in  that  way  must  Milton,  as  boy  and  man, 
have  often  issued  forth  from  the  weariness  of 
his  studies  and  the  noise  and  confinement  of  the 
streets,  for  a  walk  among  the  open  fields  that 
then  lay  so  close  at  hand  for  the  Londoner. 
And  perhaps,  as  the  inhabitants  of  towns  often 
do,  he  took  a  pleasure  in  the  very  hedgerows 
unknown  to  those  who  saw  them  every  day. 
The  present  Poet  Laureate,  who  has  spent  most 
of  his  life  in  the  country,  has  asked  a  question 
to  which  it  is  not  easy  for  the  countryman 
to  give  the  answer  he  would  like — 

"  Whose  spirit  leaps  more  high, 
Plucking  the  pale  primrose, 
Than  his  whose  feet  must  fly 
The  pasture  where  it  grows  ?  " 

If  the  town-dweller  never  attains  to  that 
mystical  communion  with  the  secret  soul  of 
Nature  which  Wordsworth  and  such  as 
Wordsworth  owe  to  a  life  spent  in  the  "  tem- 
ple's inmost  shrine,"  yet  his  eye,  undulled  by 
familiarity,  commonly  sees  more  in  trees  and 
flowers  than  the  eyes  of  nearly  all  those  who 
live  every  day  among  them.  At  its  highest 
familiarity  breeds  intimacy,  but  more  often 
what  it  breeds  is  indifference.     A  man  who 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  27 

reads  the  Bible  for  the  first  time  in  middle 
life  will  never  live  inside  it  as  some  saints 
have  lived;  but  he  will  see  much  that  is 
hidden  from  most  of  those  who  have  been 
reading  it  every  day  since  they  could  read 
at  all. 

Milton  remained  in  London,  so  far  as  we  ^- 
know,  for  the  first  sixteen  years  of  his  life. 
He  was  educated  at  St.  Paul's  School  by  ay/ 
private  tutor,  one  Thomas  Young,  who  was 
later  a  conspicuous  Presbyterian  figure,  and 
by  his  father,  to  whom  he  owed  far  more 
than  to  any  one  except  himself.  The  elder 
John  Milton  was  a  remarkable  man.  He  had, 
to  begin  with,  deserted  the  religious  views  of 
his  family  and  taken  a  line  of  his  own,  a 
course  which  may  not  always  indicate  wisdom, 
but  always  indicates  force  of  character.  The 
poet's  grandfather,  who  lived  in  the  Oxford 
country,  had  adhered  very  definitely  to  Roman 
Catholicism  and  is  said  to  have  cast  off  his 
son  for  becoming  a  Protestant  and  something 
of  a  Puritan.  The  son  went  to  London,  set 
up  in  business  as  a  scrivener,  that  is,  as  some- 
thing like  a  modern  solicitor,  and  prospered 
so  much  that  by  1632  he  was  able  to  retire 
and  live  in  the  country.  He  had  considerable 
musical  talents,  and  his  compositions  are 
found  in  collections  of  tunes  to  which  such 


28  MILTON 

men  as  Morley,  Dowland  and  Orlando  Gibbons 
contributed.  His  house  was  no  doubt  full  of 
music,  as  were,  indeed,  many  others  in  that 
most  musical  of  English  centuries,^  and  it 
must  have  been  primarily  to  him  that  the 
poet  owed  the  intense  delight  in  music  which 
appears  in  all  his  works.  No  poet  speaks  of 
music  so  often,  and  none  in  his  poetry  so  often 
suggests  that  art.  The  untaught  music  of 
lark  or  nightingale  he  has  not;  but  no  poet 
has  so  much  of  the  music  which  is  one  of  the 
most  consciously  elaborate  of  those  arts  by 
which  man  expresses  at  once  his  senses,  his 
mind  and  his  soul. 

In  the  spring  of  1625,  just  a  month  or  two 
after  the  accession  of  the  king  whose  tragical 
fate  was  to  be  the  original  source  of  Milton's 
European  fame  and  very  nearly  the  cause 
of  his  mounting  a  scaffold  himself,  the  future 
author  of  Paradise  Lost  went  into  residence 
at  Cambridge  where  he  remained  for  seven 
years.  The  college  that  can  boast  his  name 
among  its  members  is  Christ's.  Unlike  so 
many  poets  he  had  a  successful  university 
career,  took  the  ordinary  degrees,  and 
evidently  made  an  impression  on  his  con- 
temporaries. No  doubt  the  strong  natural 
bias  to  a  studious  life  which  he  had  from  a 
child  made  him  apter  for  university  discipline 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  29 

than  is  usually  the  case  with  genius.  From 
the  beginning  he  had  the  passion  of  the 
student.  He  says  of  himself  that  from  his 
twelfth  year  he  scarce  ever  went  to  bed  before 
midnight;  and  Aubrey  reports  much  the 
same  and  says  that  his  father  "  ordered  the 
maid  to  sit  up  for  him."  And  his  studies  were 
in  the  main  the  accepted  studies  of  the  time, 
not,  like  Shelley's,  a  defiance  of  them.  All 
through  his  life  he  had  a  scholar's  respect 
for  learning,  and  for  the  great  tradition  of 
literature  which  it  is  the  true  business  of 
scholarship  to  maintain.  Radical  and  rebel 
as  he  was  in  politics  and  theology,  contemp- 
tuous of  law,  custom  and  precedent,  he  was 
always  the  exact  opposite  in  his  art.  There 
he  never  attempted  the  method  of  the  tabula 
rasa,  or  clean  slate,  which  made  his  political 
pamphlets  so  barren.  The  greatest  of  all 
proofs  of  the  strength  of  his  individuality  is 
that  it  so  entirely  dominates  the  vast  store 
of  learning  and  association  with  which  his 
poetry  is  loaded.  Such  a  man  will  at  least 
give  his  university  a  chance;  and,  though 
Milton  did  not  in  later  life  look  back  on  Cam- 
bridge with  great  affection  or  respect,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  seven  years  he  spent 
within  the  walls  of  a  college  were  far  from 
useless  to  the  poet  who  more  than  any  other 


30  MILTON 

was  to  make  learning  serve  the  purposes  of 
poetry. 

So  strong,  self-reliant  and  proudly  virtuous 
a  nature  was  not  likely  to  be  altogether 
popular  either  with  the  authorities  or  with 
his  companions.  Nor  was  he,  at  any  rate  at 
first.  He  had  some  difference  with  his  tutor, 
had  to  leave  Cambridge  for  a  time,  and  is 
alleged,  on  very  doubtful  evidence,  to  have 
been  flogged.  But,  whatever  his  fault  was, 
it  was  nothing  that  he  was  ashamed  of,  for 
he  publicly  alluded  to  the  affair  in  his  Latin 
poems,  and  was  never  afraid  to  challenge 
inquiry  into  his  Cambridge  career.  Nor  did 
it  injure  him  permanently  with  the  authorities. 
He  took  his  degrees  at  the  earliest  possible 
dates,  and  ten  years  after  he  left  Cambridge 
was  able  to  write  publicly  and  gratefully  of 
"  the  more  than  ordinary  respect  which  I 
found,  above  many  of  my  equals,  at  the  hands 
of  those  courteous  and  learned  men,  the 
Fellows  of  that  college  wherein  I  spent  some 
years :  who,  at  my  parting  after  I  had  taken 
two  degrees,  as  the  manner  is,  signified  many 
ways  how  much  better  it  would  content  them 
that  I  would  stay  :  as  by  many  letters  full  of 
kindness  and  loving  respect,  both  before  that 
time  and  long  after,  I  was  assured  of  their 
singular  good  affection  towards  me."     The 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  31 

Fellows  were  no  doubt  clerical  dons  of  the 
ordinary  sort :  indeed,  we  know  they  were ; 
but  they  could  not  have  Milton  among  them 
for  seven  years  without  discovering  that  he 
was  something  above  the  ordinary  under- 
graduate. Wood,  who  died  in  1695  and 
therefore  writes  as  a  contemporary,  says  of 
Milton  that  while  at  Cambridge  he  was 
"  esteemed  to  be  a  virtuous  and  sober  person 
yet  not  to  be  ignorant  of  his  own  parts." 
Such  young  men  may  not  be  popular,  but 
if  they  have  the  real  thing  in  them  they 
soon  compel  respect.  By  the  undergraduates 
Milton  was  called  "The  Lady  of  Christ's." 
And  it  is  plain,  from  his  own  references  to 
this  nickname  in  a  Prolusion  delivered  in  the 
college,  that  he  owed  it  not  only  to  his  fair 
complexion,  short  stature  and  great  personal 
beauty,  but  also  to  the  purity,  delicacy  and 
refinement  of  his  manners.  He  contemptu- 
ously asks  the  audience  who  had  given  him 
the  nickname  whether  the  name  of  manhood 
was  to  be  confined  to  those  who  could  drain 
great  tankards  of  ale  or  to  peasants  whose 
hands  were  hard  with  holding  the  plough. 
He  disdains  the  implied  charge  of  prudery, 
and  indeed  his  language  is  what  could  not  have 
been  used  by  an  effeminate  or  a  coward.  No 
braver  man  ever  held  a  pen.     Wood  says 


32  MILTON 

that  "  his  deportment  was  affable,  his  gait 
erect,  bespeaking  courage  and  undaunted- 
ness,"  and  he  himself  tells  us  that  "  he  did 
not  neglect  daily  practice  with  his  sword," 
and  that  "  when  armed  with  it,  as  he  generally 
was,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  thinking  himself 
quite  a  match  for  any  one  and  of  being  per- 
fectly at  ease  as  to  any  injury  that  any  one 
could  offer  him."  {Evidently  he  owed  his 
title  of  "  Lady  "  to  no  weakness,  but  to  a 
disgust  at  the  coarse  and  barbarous  amuse- 
ments then  common  at  the  universities.)  He 
says  of  himself  that  he  had  no  faculty  for 
"  festivities  and  jests,"  as  indeed  was  to  be 
witnessed  by  all  his  writings.  The  witticisms, 
if  such  they  can  be  called,  which  occur  in  his 
poetry  and  oftener  in  his  prose  are  akin  to 
what  are  now  called  practical  jokes,  that  is 
jokes  made  by  the  bodies  of  those  whose 
minds  are  not  capable  of  joking.  This  was 
partly  the  common  fault  of  an  age  whose 
jests,  as  may  be  seen  sometimes  even  in 
Shakspeare,  appear  to  us  to  alternate  be- 
tween the  merety  obvious,  the  merely  verbal, 
and  the  merely  barbarous ;  but  it  was  partly 
also  the  peculiar  temperament  of  Milton,  whose 
sense  of  humour,  like  that  of  many  learned 
and  serious  men,  was  so  sluggish  that  it  could 
only  be  moved  by  a  very  violent  stimulus. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  33 

But  in  the  main  with  Milton  there  was  no 
question  of  jests,  good  or  bad.  It  is  evident 
from  his  own  proud  confessions  that  he  was 
always  intensely  serious,  at  least  from  his 
Cambridge  days,  always  conscious  of  the 
greatness  of  life's  issues,  always  uplifted  with 
the  noblest  sort  of  ambition.  He  says  of 
himself  that,  however  he  might  admire  the 
art  of  Ovid  and  poets  of  Ovid's  sort,  he  soon 
learnt  to  dislike  their  morals  and  turned  from 
them  to  the  "  sublime  and  pure  thoughts  "  of 
Petrarch  and  Dante.  And  his  "  reasonings, 
together  with  a  certain  niceness  of  nature,  an 
honest  haughtiness,  and  self-esteem  either  of 
what  I  was  or  what  I  might  be  (which  let 
envy  call  pride)  .  .  .  kept  me  still  above 
those  low  descents  of  mind  beneath  which  he 
must  deject  and  plunge  himself  that  can  agree 
to  saleable  and  unlawful  prostitutions."  And 
in  repudiating  an  impudently  false  charge 
against  his  own  character  he  boldly  announces 
a  doctrine  far  above  his  own  age,  one,  indeed, 
to  which  ours  has  not  yet  attained.  "  Having 
had  the  doctrine  of  Holy  Scripture  unfolding 
these  chaste  and  high  mysteries  with  timeliest 
care  infused  that  '  the  body  is  for  the  Lord 
and  the  Lord  for  the  body,'  thus  also  I  argued 
to  myself, — that,  if  unchastity  in  a  woman, 
whom  St.  Paul  terms  the  glory  of  man,  be 

B 


34  MILTON 

such  a  scandal  and  dishonour,  then  certainly 
in  a  man,  who  is  both  the  image  and  glory 
i  of  God,  it  must,  though  commonly  not  so 
thought,  be  much  more  deflowering  and  dis- 
honourable. .  .  .  Thus  large  I  have  purposely 
been  that,  if  I  have  been  justly  taxed  with 
this  crime,  it  may  come  upon  me  after  all  this 
my  confession  with  a  tenfold  shame." 

Such  was  the  man  from  the  first,  severe 
with  others  and  with  himself,  conscious, 
almost  from  boyhood,  in  his  own  famous 
words,  that, "  he  who  would  not  be  frustrate 
of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable 
things  ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem  " ;  a 
somewhat  strange  figure,  no  doubt,  among  the 
tavern-haunting  undergraduates  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  a  stranger  still  to  be  honoured, 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years  later,  in  the  rooms 
which  then  and  now  were  remembered  as  his, 
by  the  single  act  of  drunkenness  in  the  long 
and  virtuous  life  of  Wordsworth.  When  he 
left  the  university  in  1632  Milton  had  con- 
quered respect,  though  probably  not  popu- 
larity. The  tone  of  the  sixth  of  the  academic 
Orations,  which  he  delivered  at  Cambridge 
and  allowed  to  be  published  in  his  old  age, 
shows  that,  being  still  aware  that  he  was  not 
popular,  he  was  surprised  and  pleased  at  the 
applause  with  which  a  previous  discourse  of 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  35 

his  had  been  received  and  at  the  large  gather- 
ing which  had  crowded  to  hear  the  one  he 
was  delivering.  He  says  that  "  nearly  the 
whole  flower  of  the  university  "  was  present ; 
and,  after  allowing  for  compliments,  it  is  plain 
that  only  a  man  whose  name  aroused  expecta- 
tions could  draw  an  audience  which  could  be 
so  described  without  obvious  absurdity. 

We  may  well  then  believe  that  there  is  no 
great  exaggeration  in  his  nephew's  statement, 
substantially  confirmed  as  it  is  by  other 
evidence,  that  when  Milton  left  Cambridge 
in  1632  he  was  already  "  loved  and  admired 
by  the  whole  university,  particularly  by  the 
Fellows  and  most  ingenious  persons  of  his 
House."  He  had,  as  Wood  says,  "  performed 
the  collegiate  and  academical  exercises  to  the 
admiration  of  all."  The  power  of  his  mind, 
the  grave  strength  of  his  character,  could  not 
but  be  plain  to  all  who  had  come  into  close 
contact  with  him,  and  even  for  those  who 
had  not  he  was  a  man  who  had  distinction 
plainly  written  on  his  face.  It  is  possible, 
even,  that  he  was  already  known  as  a  poet. 
Before  he  left  Cambridge  he  had  written 
several  of  the  poems  which  we  still  read  in 
his  works  :  the  beautiful  stanzas  On  the  Death 
of  a  Fair  Infant,  so  like  and  so  unlike  the 
early  poems  of    Shakspeare,  the  noble    Ode 


36  MILTON 

on  the  Nativity  begun  probably  on  Christmas 
Day  1629,  though  this  is  not  certain;  the 
pretty  little  Song  on  May  Morning  which 
one  likes  to  fancy  having  been  sung  at  some 
such  Cambridge  greeting  of  the  rising  May 
Day  sun  as  those  which  are  still  performed 
on  Magdalen  Tower  at  Oxford;  certainly 
the  remarkable  lines  which  are  his  tribute 
to  Shakspeare  :  certainly  also  the  beautiful 
Epitaph  on  the  Marchioness  of  Winchester ; 
and,  to  mention  no  more,  the  autobiographical 
sonnet  on  attaining  the  age  of  twenty-three. 
None  of  these  except  the  lines  on  Shakspeare 
are  known  to  have  been  published  before 
they  appeared  in  the  volume  of  Milton's  poems 
issued  in  1645.  But  the  fact  that  those  lines 
were  printed,  though  without  Milton's  name, 
among  the  commendatory  verses  prefixed  to 
the  1632  Folio  Edition  of  Shakspeare,  may 
imply  that  Milton  was  already  known  as  a 
young  poet.  There  is  also  a  story  that  the 
poem  on  the  death  of  Lady  Winchester  was 
printed  in  a  contemporary  Cambridge  collec- 
tion. But  whether  this  were  so  or  not  (and  no 
such  volume  is  known  to  have  existed),  it  seems 
almost  certain  that  some  of  Milton's  poems 
would  have  got  known  by  being  passed  about 
in  manuscript  copies.  He  himself  from  the 
first  undervalued  nothing  he  wrote,  and  was 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  37 

not  afraid  to  say  publicly,  in  his  Reason  of 
Church  Government,  that,  from  his  early  youth, 
it  had  been  found  that,  "  whether  aught  was 
imposed  me  by  them  that  had  the  overlooking, 
or  betaken  to  of  mine  own  choice  in  English 
or  other  tongue,  prosing  or  versing,  but  chiefly 
this  latter,  the  style,  by  certain  signs  it  had, 
was  likely  to  live."  He  published  these  bold 
words  in  1641,  when  he  had  given  no  public 
proof  at  all  of  their  truth.  Such  a  man  was 
not  likely  to  be  unwilling  that  his  verses 
should  be  seen  :  and  in  particular  such  poems 
as  the  epitaph  on  Lady  Winchester,  whose 
death  aroused  much  public  interest,  or  the 
Ode  on  the  Nativity,  plainly  challenging  the 
greatest  of  his  predecessors  by  its  high  theme 
and  noble  art,  are  almost  sure  to  have  got 
about  and  won  him  some  fame. 

He  had  earned  distinction,  then,  and  aroused 
expectation  before  the  end  of  his  university 
career.  But  what  surprised  his  contem- 
poraries was  that  for  the  next  seven  or  eight 
years  he  appeared  to  do  little  or  nothing  to 
justify  the  one  or  fulfil  the  other.  Leaving 
Cambridge  when  he  was  twenty-three,  he 
entered  no  profession,  but  lived  till  he  was 
past  twenty-nine  in  studious  retirement  at 
his  father's  country  house  at  Horton  near 
Windsor.     His  father,  and  other  friends,  very 


38  MILTON 

naturally  remonstrated  at  this  apparent  in- 
activity. To  them  all  the  answer  is  the  same. 
He  cannot  now  enter  the  Church,  as  he  had 
intended,  because  he  would  not  "  subscribe 
slave  "  and  take  oaths  that  he  could  not  keep. 
He  is  not  surrendering  himself  to  "  the  endless 
delight  of  speculation,"  or  to  the  pleasure 
of  "  dreaming  away  his  years  in  the  arms 
of  studious  retirement."  No;  he  has  other 
things  in  view  than  these  :  but  for  their  per- 
formance he  demands  time  for  himself  and 
patience  from  his  friends  :  his  own  thought 
is  not  of  being  early  or  late  but  of  being  fit. 
And  the  work  for  which  he  is  preparing  is  in 
his  own  mind  a  settled  thing.  It  is  literature, 
poetry,  and,  in  particular,  as  will  soon  appear 
more  definitely,  a  great  poem  to  take  its 
place  among  the  great  poems  of  the  world. 

The  writing  of  poetry  has  never  been  a 
recognized  and  seldom  a  lucrative  profession. 
Most  poets,  like  other  artists,  have  had  to  face 
family  opposition  and  the  danger  of  poverty 
in  obeying  their  inward  call.  In  this  matter 
Milton  is  one  of  the  great  exceptions.  Many 
poets  have  had  fathers  as  rich  as  his,  but  it 
would  not  be  easy  to  find  one  who  resigned 
himself  so  cheerfully  to  the  prospect  of  having 
a  poetic  son.  The  elder  Milton  was,  however, 
as  we  have  seen,  no  ordinary  man.     His  sense 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER  39 

of  the  value  of  the  things  of  the  mind  was 
almost  as  great  as  his  faith  in  his  son  and  far 
greater  than  his  ambition  for  his  son's  visible 
success  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  He  had 
naturally  hoped  that  that  son's  evident 
abilities  would  be  exhibited  in  the  ordinary 
course  in  a  recognized  profession;  and  he 
evidently  made  some  protest  against  the 
apparently  objectless  studies  which,  even 
after  leaving  Cambridge,  Milton  seemed  to 
regard  as  his  sole  business  in  life.  The  record 
of  this  survives  in  the  Latin  poem  Ad  Patrem 
which  is  plainly  a  reply  to  some  such  remon- 
strance. It  is  an  appeal,  and  one  of  very 
confident  tone,  to  his  father  not  to  scorn  the 
Muses  to  whom  he  himself  owes  his  own  great 
musical  gifts.  Why  should  he,  a  musician,  be 
astonished  to  find  that  his  son  is  a  poet? 
Poetry  more  than  any  of  man's  other  gifts  is 
the  proof  of  his  divine  origin :  music  and 
poetry  rank  together ;  may  it  not  be  that  he 
and  his  father  have  divided  between  them  the 
two  great  gifts  of  Apollo  ? 

"  Dividuumque  Deum  genitorque  puerque 
tenemus." 

The  poem  rings  with  the  scorn  of  wealth, 
from  which  one  must  suppose  that  the  old 
man  of  business  had  pointed  out  that  the 


40  MILTON 

scholar's  life  was  not  usually  lived  under  the 
smiles  of  Fortune.  How  can  you,  of  all  men, 
replies  his  son,  ask  me  to  care  much  for  that  ? 
You  trained  me  from  the  first  for  learning,  not 
for  the  City  or  the  Bar;  the  father  who  had 
his  son  taught  not  only  Latin,  but  Greek  and 
Hebrew,  French  and  Italian,  astronomy  and 
physical  science,  cannot  ask  him  to  regard 
money  making  as  the  object  of  life.  I  have 
chosen  a  better  part  than  that :  and  you  were 
the  inspirer  of  my  choice.  And  I  know  that 
at  heart  you  agree  with  it  and  share  it. 

The  poem  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
of  Milton's  Latin  poems,  being  rather  less 
affected  than  most  of  them  by  that  artificiality 
of  classical  allusion  which  is  the  bane  of  such 
productions.  So  far  as  we  know,  it  was  the 
last  word  on  its  subject.  From  henceforth 
no  one  questioned  Milton's  right  to  be  a  poet 
and  himself.  If  he  ever  afterwards  deserted 
his  poetic  vocation  it  was  at  what  he  believed 
to  be  a  still  higher  call.  For  the  present  he 
lived  on  quietly  at  Horton,  near  the  Church 
where  his  mother's  grave  may  still  be  seen; 
walking  often,  as  we  may  suppose,  about  that 
quietly  beautiful  country  washed  by  the 
Thames  and  crowned  by  Windsor  Castle ;  and 
sometimes,  as  we  know  from  his  own  words, 
travelling  the  seventeen  or  eighteen  miles  to 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  4* 

London  to  buy  books  or  learn  "  anything  new 
in  Mathematics  or  in  Music,  in  which  sciences 

I  then  delighted."  Some  of  these  visits  to 
London  evidently  lasted  days  or  weeks. 

The  interesting  thing  about  these  six  years 
at  Horton  is  that  they  are  the  only  part 
of  his  life  during  which  the  least  rural  of 
our  poets  lived  continuously  in  the  country. 
And  perhaps  we  may  say  that  they  bore 
their  natural  fruit;  for  it  was  while  he  was 
at  Horton  that  Milton  wrote  V Allegro  and 

II  Penseroso,  in  which  he  touched  rural  life 
and  rural  scenes  with  a  freshness  and  direct- 
ness which  he  never  again  equalled.  And 
the  most  important  of  the  other  poems 
written  during  these  years,  Arcades,  Comus, 
and  above  all,  Lycidas,  show  the  same  in- 
fluence. Arcades  and  Comus  point  also  to 
the  effect  of  his  visits  to  London  and  the 
musical  world  :  for  both  of  these  were  written 
for  the  music  of  his  friend  Henry  Lawes, 
and  probably  at  his  suggestion ;  and,  written 
as  they  were  for  entertainments  given  by 
members  of  the  noble  families  of  Stanley  and 
Egerton,  they  show  that  Milton's  plan  of  life 
did  not  involve  cutting  himself  off  from  the 
great  world,  where  they  must  have  caused 
his  name  to  be  talked  of.  His  life  at  Horton 
was  evidently  not  that  of  a  mere  recluse, 

B2 


*42  MILTON 

forgetting  the  world  outside  and  forgotten  by 
it.  Arcades  and  Comus,  and  still  more  the 
wonderful  outburst  At  a  Solemn  Music,  are 
visible  links  with  the  cultivated  circles  of  the 
town,  as  Lycidas,  which  followed  them  in 
1637  and  was  printed  in  1638  at  Cambridge 
with  other  poems  to  the  memory  of  Edward 
King,  is  a  visible  link  with  his  old  university. 

The  mention  of  the  poems  of  these  years, 
the  most  delightful  that  Milton  was  ever  to 
write,  show  that  the  six  years  spent  at 
Horton  were  not  entirely  what  he  calls  them, 
"  a  complete  holiday  spent  in  reading  over 
the  Greek  and  Latin  writers."  If  he  had 
never  written  another  line,  he  had  written 
enough  by  the  time  he  left  Horton  to  give 
him  a  place  among  the  very  greatest  men 
who  have  practised  the  art  of  poetry  in 
England.  When  he  started  abroad  in  1638 
he  must  have  known,  and  his  father  too, 
that  his  daring  choice  had  already  justified 
itself.  "  You  ask  what  I  am  about,  what  I 
am  thinking  of,"  he  writes  to  his  friend 
Diodati  at  the  end  of  the  Horton  time ;  "  why, 
with  God's  help,  of  immortality."  It  is  the 
voice  of  a  man  who  knows  he  has  already 
done  great  things  but  counts  them  as  nothing 
compared  with  what  he  is  to  do  later  on. 

Man  proposes.     In  1637  Milton  was  "  plum- 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  43 

ing  his  wings  "  for  the  very  mightiest  of  poetic 
flights,  for  such  a  poem  as  would  give  full 
scope  to  his  genius  and  place  him  among  the 
great  poets  of  the  world.  But  in  the  result 
he  actually  wrote  less  poetry  in  the  next 
twenty  years  than  he  had  written  in  the 
previous  five  :  less  in  quantity  and  far  less 
in  quality  and  importance.  The  first  inter- 
ruption was  the  completion  of  his  elaborate 
education  by  a  grand  tour.  His  generous 
father,  who  was  well-to-do  rather  than  rich, 
had  acquiesced  in  his  not  so  far  earning  one 
penny  for  himself,  and  was  now  prepared  to 
provide  him  with  about  a  thousand  pounds 
of  our  present  money  to  enable  him  to  go 
abroad  for  a  year  or  two  in  comfortable 
style  and  with  the  attendance  of  a  servant. 
Leaving  England  in  the  spring  of  1638,  he 
spent  a  few  days  in  Paris,  where  he  was 
civilly  entertained  by  the  famous  Grotius, 
then  Swedish  Ambassador  there,  as  well  as 
by  the  English  Ambassador,  Lord  Scuda- 
more;  but  soon  moved  south,  entering  Italy 
by  Nice  and  Genoa  and  arriving  at  Florence 
in  August  or  September.  There  he  spent 
two  months,  and  was  enthusiastically  re- 
ceived by  the  various  academies  or  clubs 
of  men  of  letters  which  then  flourished  in 
Florence,  one  of  whose  still  existing  minute 


44  MILTON 

books  records  that  at  its  meeting  on  September 
the  16th  a  certain  John  Milton,  an  Englishman, 
read  to  the  members  a  Latin  hexameter  poem 
showing  great  learning.  There  also  he  paid 
his  famous  visit  to  Galileo,  now  old  and  blind, 
and  still  a  sort  of  nominal  prisoner  of  the 
Inquisition,  for  the  sin,  as  Milton  says  in 
the  Areopagitica,  of  "  thinking  in  Astronomy 
otherwise  than  the  Franciscan  and  Dominican 
licensers  thought."  One  may  be  sure  that  it 
was  not  merely  the  interest  of  the  new  theory 
about  the  motion  of  the  earth  which  drew 
him  back  so  often  to  that  question  in  Paradise 
Lost  The  blind  astronomer,  whose  scientific 
heresies  had  placed  him  in  some  danger  of 
the  thumbscrew,  must  have  been  a  very  near 
and  moving  memory  to  the  blind  poet  whose 
political  and  ecclesiastical  heresies  had  so 
nearly  brought  him  to  the  gallows. 

From  Florence  Milton  went  on  to  Rome, 
where  his  scholarly  tastes  gratified  them- 
selves for  two  months  in  the  study  of  what 
remained  of  the  ancient  city.  The  famous 
picture  of  Rome  in  Paradise  Regained  may 
owe  something  to  these  weeks.  There,  too, 
he  was  well  received  by  several  of  Rome's 
most  distinguished  scholars  who  paid  him 
compliments  of  Italian  extravagance.  There, 
too,   he  heard  the  famous  Leonora  Baroni 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  45 

sing,  and  was  so  moved  as  to  write  three 
Latin  epigrams  in  her  praise.  But  it  was  at 
Naples,  whither  he  passed  on  before  winter, 
that  he  made  the  acquaintance  which,  except 
that  of  Galileo,  is  the  most  interesting  his 
Italian  tour  brought  him.  It  was  that  of 
the  Neopolitan  patrician,  Giovanni  Manso, 
who  had  been  intimate  with  Tasso  and 
Marini  and  had  been  celebrated  by  Tasso  in 
the  Gerusalemme  Conquistata.  His  courtesy 
to  a  foreigner  was  soon  to  procure  him  a  still 
greater  honour;  for  before  leaving  Naples 
Milton  addressed  to  him  a  Latin  poem  thank- 
ing him  for  his  kindness,  speaking  openly  of 
his  own  poetic  ambitions  and  praying  that,  if 
he  lives  to  write  the  great  Arthurian  Epic 
which  he  was  then  planning,  he  may  find 
such  a  friend  as  Tasso  found  to  welcome  his 
poem,  comfort  his  old  age  and  cherish  his 
fame.  The  only  difficulty  which  separated 
Manso  and  Milton  was  that  of  religion,  where 
Milton's  unguarded  frankness  embarrassed 
his  host.  So,  when  he  abandoned  his  in- 
tended tour  in  Greece  because  he  thought  it 
"  base  "  to  be  "  travelling  abroad  at  ease  for 
intellectual  culture  while  his  fellow-country- 
men were  fighting  at  home  for  liberty,"  he 
was  warned  that  the  Jesuits  at  Rome  had 
their  eyes  on  him.     But  he  stayed  there  two 


46  MILTON 

months  nevertheless,  fearlessly  keeping  his 
resolution,  not  indeed  to  introduce  or  invite 
religious  controversy  but,  if  questioned,  then, 
as  he  says,  "  whatsoever  I  should  suffer  to 
dissemble  nothing.'''  By  February  he  was 
again  in  Florence ;  and  after  visits  to  Bologna, 
Ferrara  and  Venice,  whence  he  characteristic- 
ally shipped  "  a  chest  or  two  of  choice  music 
books "  for  England,  he  crossed  the  Alps, 
spent  a  week  or  two  at  Geneva  and  in  France, 
and  was  at  home  by  August  1639. 

The  elaborate  education  was  now  formally 
complete;  and  what  ordinary  men  call 
practical  life  was  at  last  to  begin  for  Milton. 
Now  for  the  first  time  he  had  an  abode  of 
his  own,  a  lodging  in  St.  Bride's,  Fleet  Street, 
and  soon  afterwards  a  house  in  Aldersgate 
Street  where  he  settled  with  a  young  nephew 
whom  he  undertook  to  educate.  But  the  real 
work  which  he  had  in  view  was  that  of  a  poet, 
not  of  a  schoolmaster.  The  high  expecta- 
tions which  he  knew  he  had  excited  among 
Italian  men  of  letters  had  reinforced  those  of 
his  English  friends;  and  he  was  now  more 
than  ever  inclined  to  follow  that  "  inward 
prompting  which  now  grew  daily  upon  me 
that  by  labour  and  intent  study  (which  I 
take  to  be  my  portion  in  this  life),  joined  with 
the  strong  propensity  of  nature,  I  might  per- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  47 

haps  leave  something  so  written  to  aftertimes 
as  they  should  not  willingly  let  it  die."  So, 
as  his  extant  notes  show,  he  was  weighing  a 
large  number  of  subjects  for  the  great  poem, 
slowly  settling  on  a  Biblical  one,  and  indeed 
on  that  of  the  Fall  of  Man,  and  perhaps 
writing  some  earliest  lines  of  what  we  now 
know  as  Paradise  Lost. 

/&it  in  November  1640  occurred  an  event 
which  governed  Milton's  life  for  the  next 
twenty  years.  The  Long  Parliament  met, 
and,  from  that  time  forward  till  its  final 
meeting  in  1660  to  dissolve  itself  and  prepare 
the  way  for  Charles  II,  politics  were  the 
dominant  interest  of  Milton's  mind.  It  is  his 
age  of  prose;  during  it  he  wrote  very  little 
verse  of  any  kind,  and  none  of  importance 
except  the  finer  of  his  eighteen  Sonnets  which 
nearly  all  belong  to  these  years.  On  the 
other  hand,  most  of  his  prose  works  were 
written  between  1640  and  1660.  Of  these  it 
is  enough  to  say  that  they  are  perhaps  the 
most  curious  of  all  illustrations  of  the  great 
things  which  a  poet  alone  can  bring  to  prose 
and  of  the  dangers  which  he  runs  in  bringing 
them.  A  poet  of  the  stature  of  Milton  is 
ready  at  ,all  times  to  catch  all  kinds  of  fire, 
not  only  the  fires  of  faith  and  zeal  and  en- 
thusiasm, but  also,  as  a  rule,  those  of  a  scorn 


48  MILTON 

that  knows  no  limit  and  a  hatred  that  knows 
no  mercy.  Such  a  man  needs  a  strongly 
made  vessel  to  control  his  boiling  ardours. 
Prose  is  not  such  a  vessel :  and  they  too  often 
overflow  from  it  in  extravagance  and  violence. 
Poetry  in  all  its  severer  forms  places  a  re- 
straint upon  the  poet  irom  which  as  the  mood 
of  art  gains  upon  him  he  has  no  desire  to 
escape.  Law  and  limitation,  willing  obedience 
to  the  prescribed  conditions,  are  of  the  very 
essence  of  art.  And  this  is  as  true  of  the 
greatest  of  the  arts  as  of  any  other.  It  is 
not  merely  that  the  poet  accepts  the  bondage 
of  rhymes,  or  stanzas,  or  numbered  syllables, 
as  the  painter  accepts  those  of  a  flat  canvas 
and  the  sculptor  those  of  bronze  or  marble; 
it  is  that  they  all  alike  submit  to  the  mood 
of  art  which  is  always  universal  and  eternal 
as  well  as  individual  and  temporal  and  there- 
fore disdains  such  crudities  of  personal  violence 
as  are  to  be  found  everywhere  in  Milton's 
prose  and  nowhere  in  his  poetry. 

But  if  a  poet's  prose  has  its  inevitable  dis- 
advantages it  has  also  some  great  qualities 
which  only  a  poet  can  supply.  In  1640 
^Milton  plunged  into  a  great  struggle  in  which 
his  attitude  throughout  was  that  of  an  angry 
£,nd  contemptuous  partisan.  And  his  pam- 
«   phlets  exhibit  all  the  distortion  of  facts,  in- 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER  49 

justice  to  opponents,  and  narrowness  of  view 
which  are  the  inevitable  if  often  unconscious 
vices  of  the  man  who  writes  in  the  interest 
of  a  party.  But  they  also  contain  flights  of 
noble  eloquence,  in  which,  as  in  the  passage 
about  the  City  of  London  in  the  Areopagitica, 
the  soul  of  partisanship  has  undergone  a 
fiery  purification  and  emerges  free  of  all  its 
grosser  elements,  a  pure  essence  of  zeal  and 
faith  and  spiritual  vision. 

The  first  stage  of  the  struggle  was  largely 
ecclesiastical,  and  Milton  plunged  into  it  with 
five  pamphlets  in  1641  and  1642,  fiercely 
demanding  the  abolition  of  Episcopacy  and 
the  establishment  of  a  Presbyterian  systen 
in  England.  Fortunately  for  himself,  as  he 
was  soon  to  see,  the  views  he  advocated  did 
not  in  the  end  prevail.  For  the  next  step  he 
took  in  the  way  of  pamphlet  writing  would 
assuredly  have  got  him  into  difficulties  with 
any  possible  kind  of  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction, 
whether  after  the  model  of  Laud  or  of  Calvin. 
It  grew  out  of  the  most  important  and  dis- 
astrous event  in  the  whole  of  his  private  life. 
In  the  spring  of  1643  he  went  into  Oxford- 
shire, from  which  county  his  father  had 
originally .  come,  and,  to  the  surprise  of  his 
friends,  who  knew  nothing  of  his  intention, 
returned  a  married  man.     His  wife  was  one 


50  MILTON 

Mary  Powell,  the  daughter  of  a  Justice  of  the 
Peace  at  Forest  Hill,  near  Oxford.  The 
Powell  family  owed  the  Milton  family  five 
hundred  pounds,  which  may  have  been  the 
poet's  introduction  to  them.  If  so,  the 
marriage  to  which  it  led  had  the  results  that 
might  be  expected  from  such  a  beginning. 
The  war  had  then  already  begun,  the  King 
was  at  Oxford  and  the  Powells  were  Cavaliers ; 
so  that  when  Mrs.  Milton,  who  had  been 
accompanied  to  London  by  her  relations,  was 
to  be  left  alone  with  a  husband  of  twice  her 
age,  and  of  severe  tastes,  she  shrank  from  the 
prospect,  got  away  on  a  visit  to  her  family  and 
did  not  return  till  1645,  by  which  time  the 
King  was  ruined  and  with  him  the  Powells. 

When  Shelley  deserted  his  wife  he  wrote 
to  her  asking  her  to  come  and  live  with  him 
and  the  lady  who  had  supplanted  her.  When 
Milton's  wife  deserted  him  he  wrote  a  series 
of  pamphlets  advocating  divorce  at  the  will 
of  the  husband.  Such  are  the  extravagances 
of  those  whose  eyes  are  so  accustomed  to  a 
brighter  light  that  when  brought  into  that  of 
common  day  they  see  nothing,  and  make 
mistakes  which  are  justly  ridiculous  to  the 
children  of  this  world.  It  is  an  old  story : 
Plato's  philosopher  in  the  cave,  the  saint  in 
politics,  the  modern  poet  in  the  world  of  war. 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  51 

commerce,  or  industry  :  the  eye  that  sees 
heaven  often  blunders  on  earth.  Milton's 
divorce  pamphlets,  like  nearly  all  his  con- 
troversial writings,  have  three  fatal  defects. 
They  are  utterly  blind  to  the  temper  of  those  I 
to  whom  they  were  addressed,  to  the  reason-, 
able  arguments  of  opponents,  and  to  thrj 
practical  difficulties  inherent  in  their  pro- 
posals. He  argues  that,  as  the  law  gives 
relief  to  a  man  whose  wife  disappoints  him  of 
the  physical  end  of  marriage,  it  is  an  outrage 
that  he  should  have  none  when  deprived 
of  the  social  and  intellectual  companionship 
which  is  its  moral  end.  But  he  takes  no  note 
of  the  awkward  fact  that  the  dismissed  wife 
is  not  and  cannot  be  in  the  same  position  as 
she  was  before  her  marriage.  Nor  does  he 
give  the  wife  any  corresponding  rights  to  get 
rid  of  her  husband.  These,  and  a  hundred 
other  difficulties  all  too  visible  to  duller  eyes, 
he  utterly  ignores  as  he  proceeds  on  his 
violent  way  of  deliverance  from  what  he  calls 
"  imaginary  and  scarecrow  sins."  Nothing 
is  allowed  to  stand  in  his  path.  For  in- 
stance, the  awkward  texts  in  the  Bible, 
whose  authority  he  accepts,  are  given  new 
interpretations  with  which  it  is  to  be  feared 
his  temper  had  more  to  do  than  his  know- 
ledge of  the  meaning  of  Greek  words.     But 


52  MILTON 

there  is  not  a  hint  of  his  own  case  in  all  he 
says,  and  it  is  not  desertion  that  he  discusses 
but  incompatibility  of  temper.  Masson  even 
sees  reason  to  think  that  he  began  the  first 
pamphlet  before  his  wife  left  him,  but  when, 
no  doubt,  her  unfitness  to  be  his  wife  was 
only  too  evident.  However  all  that  may  be, 
we  can  only  think  with  wondering  pity  of 
those  summer  weeks  of  1643  and  of  the  two 
years  which  followed.  Everything  in  Milton's 
life  and  writings  shows  him  a  man  unusually 
susceptible  to  the  attraction  of  women,  one 
whose  love  was  of  that  strongest  sort  which  is 
built  on  a  chastity  born  not  of  coldness  but  of 
purity  and  self-control.  Such  a  man,  in  such 
a  plight,  with  the  added  misery  of  knowing 
that  he  owed  it  to  his  own  rash  folly,  may  be 
pardoned  for  forgetting  the  true  bearing  of 
his  own  doctrine  that  laws  are  made  for  the 
"  common  lump  of  men."  Cases  like  his  are 
the  real  tragedies,  the  tragedies  of  life  so 
much  more  bitter  than  the  more  visible  ones 
of  death ;  and  no  thinking  or  feeling  man  will 
lightly  decide  that  they  must  remain  un- 
relieved. But  neither  Milton  nor  any  of  his 
successors  must  look  at  the  problem  from 
his  own  point  of  view  alone.  Laws  are 
made,  and  ought  to  be,  as  he  himself  says, 
for  the  "  lump  of  men  ";   and  the  wisdom  or 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  53 

unwisdom  of  facilities  for  divorce  must  be 
judged,  not  merely  by  the  relief  they  afford 
in  unhappy  marriages,  but  also  by  the  danger 
of  disturbance  they  produce  in  the  far  more 
numerous  marriages  which,  though  experienc- 
ing their  days  of  doubt  or  difficulty,  are  on  the 
whole  happy  or  at  least  not  unhappy.  Per- 
haps Milton  himself  might  have  hesitated  if 
he  could  have  foreseen  the  consequences  of  an 
application  of  his  theories.  Modern  divorce 
laws  have  filled  our  newspapers  with  just 
that  " clamouring  debate  of  utterless  things" 
which  he  dreaded  and  abhorred,  while  few  will 
argue  that  they  have  increased  the  number 
of  unions  which  answer  to  his  conception  of 
"  the  true  intent  of  marriage." 

After  all,  Milton's  own  story  illustrates  the 
advantages  of  putting  delays  and  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  divorce.  According  to  his 
nephew  he  had  planned  to  act  upon  his 
principles  and  marry  "  a  very  handsome  and 
witty  gentlewoman " ;  but  the  lady  had 
more  regard  than  he  to  the  world's  opinion. 
And  she  did  Milton  a  service  by  her  reluctance* 
For  the  rumour  of  her,  helped  by  their  own 
misfortunes,  brought  the  Powells  to  their 
senses ;  and  with  the  help  of  Milton's  friends 
they  managed  the  well-known  scene  at  a  room 
in  St.  Martin's  the  Grand,  in  which  he  was 


54  MILTON 

surprised  by  the  sight  of  his  wife  on  her  knees 
before  him. 

"  Soon  his  heart  relented 
Towards  her,  his  life  so  late,  and  sole  delight, 
Now  at  his  feet  submissive  in  distress." 

So  he  glances  back  at  the  scene  twenty 
years  later  when  he  was  drawing  to  the  close 
of  his  great  poem.  Meanwhile  he  received 
back  his  wife,  who  bore  him  three  daughters 
and  died  in  1653  or  1654.  He  was  to  marry 
again  in  1656;  but  this  second  wife,  the 
"  espoused  saint  "  of  his  sonnet,  lived  little 
more  than  a  year;  and  in  1663  he  married 
his  third  wife  who  long  survived  him.  But  to 
return  to  the  house  in  the  Barbican,  to  which 
he  removed  with  his  wife  in  1645.  With  him 
there  were  also  his  father,  two  nephews  and 
other  boys  whom  it  was  his  principal  occupa- 
tion to  teach.  It  is  somewhat  surprising  that 
he  found  pupils,  as  his  views  on  the  divorce 
question  had  naturally  caused  scandal  in  all 
quarters  and  received  little  support  in  any. 
He  could  now  see  that  the  Presbyterian 
Church  discipline  which  he  had  advocated  so 
eagerly  in  his  first  pamphlets  might  have  its 
inconveniences;  the  elders  of  an  English 
kirk  would  be  no  more  merciful  than  his 
detested  bishops  to  such  freedom  of  thought, 
speech    and    action    as    he    now    demanded. 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER  55 

From  henceforth  he  is  an  Independent  and 
more  than  an  Independent;  for  he  was 
attached  to  no  congregation,  apparently 
attended  no  church  regularly,  and  maintained 
that  profoundly  religious  temper  which  is 
even  more  visible  in  his  last  works  than  in  his 
first  without  the  support  of  any  authority, 
creed  or  companionship  in  prayer.  With 
these  views  growing  upon  him  it  was  natural  * 
that,  when  the  struggle  came  between  thef 
Presbyterian  Parliament  and  the  Independent  J 
Army,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  supporting  the/ 
Army;  nor  is  it  surprising  that  such  a  man 
of  no  compromise  as  he  had  shown  himself 
to  be  was  ready  to  come  forward,  even  before 
the  deed  was  done,  with  a  defence  of  the 
execution  of  Charles  I.  It  is  in  connection 
with  that  event  that  his  name  first  became 
known  to  all  Europe  and  was  soon  so  famous 
that  foreigners  visiting  England  desired  to 
see  two  men  above  all  others,  Oliver  Cromwell 
and  John  Milton.  This  Milton,  from  hence- 
forth a  European  celebrity,  was  not  the 
author  of  Paradise  Lost  which  was  not  yet 
written,  nor  of  his  earlier  poems  which  were 
little  known  in  England  and  quite  unknown 
elsewhere.  He  was  the  apologist  of  the 
Regicides,  the  Foreign  Secretary  of  the 
world-famed  Protector. 


56  MILTON 

For  the  next  eleven  years,  from  1649  to 
1660,  Milton  had  a  public  and  official  as  well 
as  a  private  life.  Charles  was  executed  on 
January  30,  1649.  Within  a  few  days  after 
appeared  Milton's  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magis- 
trates, largely  written,  of  course,  before  the 
execution,  and  justifying  it  and  all  the  other 
proceedings  of  the  Army  without  any  hesi- 
tation or  compromise.  It  has  some  breath- 
ings of  the  Miltonic  grandeur ;  but  that  is  all. 
For  the  rest  it  is  a  mere  party  polemic  written 
for  the  moment;  and,  as  is  the  case  with  all 
pamphlets,  the  very  qualities  which  gave  it 
its  contemporary  interest  make  it  unreadable 
to  posterity.  Part  of  it  is  a  sweeping  asser- 
tion of  the  inalienable  right  of  the  whole 
people  to  choose,  judge  and  depose  their 
rulers;  a  democratic  doctrine  which  a  few 
fVears  later,  when  England  had  grown  tired 
of  the  Army  and  the  Puritans,  he  was  to  find 
as  inconvenient  as  he  had  already  found  his 
early  advocacy  of  the  Presbyterian  system 
in  matters  ecclesiastical.  For  the  moment, 
however,  the  pamphlet  made  him  a  person  of 
importance.  Such  a  man,  learned,  eloquent, 
of  high  character,  of  visible  sincerity,  of  utter 
fearlessness,  was  not  an  ally  to  be  despised 
by  a  Government  which  had  outraged  public 
opinion  at  home  and  abroad.     Within  a  few 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  57 

weeks  he  was  appointed  Secretary  for  Foreign 
Tongues  to  the  Council  of  State;  and  from 
henceforth  till  after  the  death  of  Cromwell 
he  wrote  the  weightiest  of  the  vindications, 
remonstrances  and  authoritative  demands 
which  the  great  Protector  addressed  to  an 
astonished  and  overawed  Europe.  We  can 
read  them  still.  Many  are  insignificant, 
dealing  with  petty  personal  details ;  but  the 
best,  especially  those  that  deal  with  the 
universal  cause  of  Protestantism  and  freedom, 
rise  on  spiritual  wings  far  above  the  language 
of  diplomacy  and  officialism,  letting  us  hear 
the  authentic  voice  of  Milton  preluding  the 
thunders  of  Cromwell  and  Blake. 

But  the  first  important  work  required  of 
Milton  belonged  rather  to  the  man  of  letters 
than  to  the  Foreign  Secretary.  The  horror 
aroused  both  at  home  and  abroad  by  the 
execution  of  Charles,  already  great  enough 
in  itself  to  be  very  inconvenient  to  the 
Government,  was  greatly  increased  by  the 
publication  of  a  book  called  Eikon  Basilike 
which  purported  to  be  the  work  of  the  king 
himself  and  appeared  immediately  after  his 
death.  It  is  a  kind  of  religious  portrait  of 
Charles,  reporting  his  spiritual  meditations 
and  containing  a  justification  of  his  life.  Its 
success  was  prodigious ;  fifty  editions  are  said 


58  MILTON 

to  have  appeared  within  a  year.  It  was 
obviously  necessary  that  some  reply  should 
be  attempted;  and  the  task  was  naturally 
assigned  to  Milton,  who  published  his  Eikono- 
klastes,  or  Image-Breaker,  in  October.  It  is  a 
mere  pamphlet,  even  more  violent  than  the 
Tenure  of  Kings,  not  ashamed  to  rake  up  such 
absurdities  as  the  alleged  poisoning  of  James  I 
by  Buckingham,  with  the  usual  Miltonic 
inconsistencies,  such  as  that  which  denounces 
Charles  for  the  crime  of  refusing  his  consent 
to  bills  passed  by  Parliament  and  forgets 
that  the  Government  on  whose  behalf  he  is 
writing  established  itself  by  a  forcible  sup- 
pression of  the  Parliamentary  majority.  It 
survives  now  only  by  the  curious  passage  in  it 
which  tells  us  that  William  Shakspeare  was 
"  the  closet  companion  "  of  Charles  I  in  the 
"  solitudes  "  of  the  end  of  his  life ;  and  by 
the  puritanical  allusion  to  the  "  vain  amatori- 
ous  poem  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia " 
from  which,  however  "  full  of  worth  and  wit  " 
in  its  own  kind,  it  was  a  disgrace  to  the  king 
to  borrow  a  prayer  at  so  grave  an  hour. 
Perhaps  as  a  mark  of  their  approval  of  Eikono- 
klastes,  the  Council  of  State  gave  Milton  lodg- 
ings in  Whitehall;  and  soon  afterwards,  in 
January  1650,  called  upon  him  to  reply  to 
another  Royalist  book  which  was  making  a 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER  59 

great  stir.  The  result  was  the  beginning  of 
a  political  and  personal  controversy  which 
lasted  almost  as  long  as  it  was  safe  for  Milton 
to  write  about  politics  at  all. 

In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
great  scholars  had  a  position  which  they  are 
never  likely  to  occupy  again.  In  those  cosmo- 
politan days  when  an  Italian  governed  France, 
and  regiments  and  even  armies  were  often 
commanded  by  foreigners,  the  honour  of 
possessing  a  celebrated  scholar  was  eagerly 
disputed  not  only  by  universities,  but  by 
cities,  sovereign  states,  and  even  kings. 
Learning  had  then  a  market  value  in  the 
world  :  for  then,  as  always,  especially  since 
the  invention  of  printing,  European  opinion 
was  worth  having  on  one's  side;  and  in 
the  days  before  journalism  the  practice  was 
to  hire  distinguished  scholars  to  write  to  a 
political  brief.  After  the  death  of  Charles  lV 
it  was  obviously  the  policy  of  Charles  II  to 
secure  support  by  a  powerful  indictment  of 
the  iniquity  of  the  rulers  of  the  English 
Commonwealth.  For  this  purpose  his  advisers 
obtained  the  services  of  a  certain  Claude  de 
Saumaise,  or,  as  he  was  generally  called, 
Salmasius.  This  man,  forgotten  now  except 
for  Milton,  was  then  a  scholar  of  such  fame 
that  his  presence  was  disputed  between  Oxford 


60  MILTON 

and  Venice,  the  French  and  the  Dutch,  be- 
tween the  Pope  who  wanted  him  at  Rome 
and  Christina  of  Sweden  who  was  soon  to 
persuade  him  to  go  to  Stockholm.  So  it  is 
not  altogether  surprising  that  Charles  II  was 
advised  to  pay  him,  and  perhaps  paid  him, 
much  more  than  he  could  afford  for  writing 
a  book  called  Defensio  Regia,  which  was  to 
be  before  all  Europe  the  public  statement  of 
the  case  against  the  new  rulers  of  England. 
Milton  spent  a  year  in  preparing  his  reply, 
which  came  out  in  the  beginning  of  1651.  The 
Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio  is  now  plea- 
santer  reading  for  Milton's  detractors  than 
for  those  who  honour  his  name.  The  un- 
bridled insults  which  it  heaps  upon  Charles  I 
and  still  more  upon  Salmasius,  for  whom  its 
least  offensive  titles  are  such  as  "  blockhead," 
"  liar  "  and  "  apostate,"  exceed  even  the  wide 
limits  of  abuse  customary  in  these  days. 
Corruptio  optimi  pessima :  such  a  man  as 
Milton,  if  he  once  descends  to  the  bandying 
of  foul  language,  will  beat  the  very  bargemen 
themselves.  But  what  astonished  his  con- 
temporaries was  not  his  violence  but  his 
courage.  An  unknown  Englishman  had  dared 
to  meet  the  giant  of  learning  on  his  own 
ground  and  had  at  least  held  his  own.  It 
may  have  been  partly  as  the  result  of  this 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  61 

that  Salmasius  no  longer  found  Holland  a 
pleasant  place  of  residence  and  removed  to 
Sweden.  A  more  certain  result  is  that  the 
English  David  who  had  stood  up  to  Goliath 
was  from  henceforth  a  European  celebrity. 
With  his  usual  proud  courage  he  had  put  his 
own  name  on  the  title-page  of  his  book, 
challenging  to  himself  both  the  glories  and 
the  dangers  that  might  come  of  it.  He  was 
not  to  be  disappointed  of  either. 

From  henceforth  he  was  in  the  thick  of  a 
violent  controversy,  which  made  so  much 
more  noise  than  it  deserved  in  its  own  day 
that  it  need  make  none  here.  Replies  came 
out  both  to  his  Eikonoklastes  and  to  his 
Defensio :  new  books  grew  out  of  the  con- 
troversy; Milton's  nephew  wrote  on  his  be- 
half, and  anonymous  friends  of  Salmasius  on 
his ;  the  adversaries  of  Milton  no  more  spared 
his  character  than  he  had  spared  theirs;  a 
Defensio  Secunda  from  his  own  hand  seemed 
necessary,  and  appeared  in  1654;  and  so  with 
minor  pamphlets  and  second  editions  we  get 
on  to  the  end  of  the  weary  controversy,  in 
which  for  contemporaries  there  was  perhaps 
some  fire  and  light,  but  for  us  now  little  but 
smoke  and  darkness  of  confusion. 

Such  was  the  work  which  was  Milton's  chief 
occupation  during  the  Commonwealth,  to  the 


62  MILTON 

doing  of  which  he  deliberately  sacrificed  his 
eyesight.  Within  a  year  after  the  publica- 
tion of  his  book  against  Salmasius  its  foreseen 
result  was  complete.  From  henceforth  Milton 
was  dependent  upon  the  eyes  of  others.  He 
was  only  forty-four  when  overtaken  by  this 
calamity.  Yet  his  courage  seems  never  to 
have  failed  him.  "  I  argue  not,"  he  tells 
Cyriack  Skinner  in  his  sonnet — 

"  Against  Heaven's  hand  or  will,  nor  bate  a 
jot 
Of  heart  or  hope,  but  still  bear  up  and 
steer 
Right  onward.     What   supports   me,    dost 
thou  ask? 
The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them 

overplied 
In  Liberty's  defence,  my  noble  task, 
Of  which  all  Europe  rings  from  side  to  side." 

Whoever  had  begun  to  have  doubts  about 
the  course  taken  in  1649  and  since,  he  had 
none ;  and  no  one  had  suffered  more  in  defence 
of  it.  The  other  and  greater  sonnet  on  his 
blindness — 

"  When  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days  in  this  dark  world  and 
wide  " 

shows  him  content  if  need  be  to  take  his 
place    among   those   whose   desire   to    serve 


h 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER  63 

God  must  find  its  peace  in  the  thought 
that 

"  They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait." 

In  the  same  spirit,  perhaps,  is  the  motto 
which  he  appended  to  his  signature  in  the 
album  of  a  learned  foreigner  in  1651  :  "  I  am 
made  perfect  in  weakness."  But  nothing  of 
weakness,  not  even  its  perfection,  could  ever 
come  near  Milton.  He  played  a  greater  part 
in  this  world  without  his  eyes  than  ever  he 
had  played  with  them.  Without  their  help 
he  did  what  prose  could  do  towards  justifying 
the  ways  of  England  to  Europe,  and  was  very 
soon  to  do  what  verse  could  do  towards  justify- 
ing the  ways  of  God  to  men.  He  cannot, 
perhaps,  be  said  to  have  succeeded  in  either, 
but  one  at  least  of  the  failures  is  a  whole 
heaven  above  what  ordinary  men  call  success**. 

A  few  words  may  be  said  of  his  attitude   ^ 
towards  men  and  measures  during  this  political       / 
period  of  his  life.     His  unqualified  and  im-     / 
mediate  support  of  the  King's  execution  had, 
of  course,  united  him  with  the  Cromwellian 
party  who  had  brought  it  about.     And  his 
anti-Presbyterian  views  carried  him  in  the 
same  direction.     So  we  are  not  surprised  to 
find   that,    when    Cromwell    got    rid    of   the 
Parliament  by  military  force  and  soon  after- 


64  MILTON 

wards  became  Protector,  Milton  approved  his 
action  and  gladly  continued  to  serve  under 
him.  Nor  was  Milton  the  man  to  be  dis- 
turbed by  the  Protector's  rapid  dissolution 
of  his  first  Parliament,  by  the  period  of 
personal  Government  which  followed,  or  by 
his  angry  breach  with  his  second  Parliament. 
Poets  have  seldom  understood  politics,  and 
Milton,  the  most  political  of  poets,  perhaps 
less  than  any.  No  man  ever  had  less  of  that 
sense  of  law  and  custom,  of  the  need  of  con- 
tinuity, which  is  the  very  centre  and  secret 
of  politics.  Few  great  statesmen  have  been 
able  to  maintain  perfect  consistency ;  but  the 
least  consistent  have  generally  been  aware 
that  there  was  something  in  inconsistencies 
/  that  needed  explanation.  Milton  never  shows 
any  consciousness  of  the  patent  incongruity 
between  his  early  exaltation  of  the  indefeasible 
rights  of  Parliaments  and  his  support  of  the 
Cromwellian  attitude  towards  them :  between 
his  angry  denunciation  of  Charles  I  for  pre- 
suming to  retain  the  ancient  right  of  the 
kings  to  refuse  their  assent  to  Bills  submitted 
to  them  and  his  approval  of  Cromwell's  dis- 
missal of  a  Parliament  for  attempting  to  deny 
the  same  right  to  the  Protector :  between  the 
extreme  doctrine  of  free  printing  claimed  in 
the  Areopagitica  and  the  fact  that  its  author 


: 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  65 

was  afterwards  concerned  in  licensing  books 
under  a  Government  which  vigorously  sup- 
pressed "  seditious  "  publications.  But  in- 
consistencies by  themselves  are  of  little 
importance,  particularly  in  revolutionary 
times;  they  would  be  of  none,  in  Milton's 
case,  if  he  had  ever  admitted  that  he  had 
learnt  from  experience  and  consequently 
changed  his  mind.  But  he  never  did.  Parlia- 
ments remained  sacred  when  they  were  for 
pulling  down  bishops,  profane  when  they  were 
for  establishing  Presbyterianism,  and  utterly 
detestable  when  they  were  for  restoring 
Charles  II.  The  fact  is,  of  course,  that 
Milton,  like  most  men  of  much  imagination 
and  no  political  experience,  saw  a  vision  of 
certain  things  in  the  value  of  which  he  be- 
lieved with  all  his  soul,  and  saw  none  of  the 
objections  to  them  and  none  of  the  difficulties 
that  stood  in  their  way.  At  the  very  end, 
when  the  bonfires  for  Charles  II  were  almost 
lighted  in  the  streets,  he  could  publish  A 
Ready  and  Easy  Way  to  Establish  a  Free 
Commonwealth ;  and  the  title  he  chose  for 
that  book  was  typical  of  his  whole  attitude 
in  all  practical  matters.  He  had  to  an 
extreme  degree  the  man  of  vision's  blindness 
to  the  all -important  fact  that  the  mass  of 
men  would  not  have  what  he  aims  at  if  they 
c 


66  MILTON 

could  and  could  not  if  they  would.  At  least 
in  a  free  country  the  statesman  knows  that 
he  has  got  to  work  through  stupid  people, 
with  their  consent,  and  with  regard  to  the 
measure  of  their  capacities.  For  such  men 
as  Milton  stupid  people  either  do  not  exist  or 
are  to  be  merely  ignored.  That  is  his  attitude 
all  through.  Alike  in  the  matter  of  divorce 
and  in  the  matter  of  education,  in  the  ecclesi- 
astical problem  and  in  the  political,  he  was 
always  eager  to  put  forward  a  "ready  and 
easy  way  "  which  entirely  ignored  the  nature 
of  the  human  material  which  was  to  walk  in  it. 
He  simply  chose  not  to  see  that  in  all  these 
matters  men  had  for  centuries  been  walking 
in  a  way  which  was  not  his,  a  way  which 
had  in  fact  by  now  diverged  many  miles 
from  his;  and  that  they  could  not  possibly, 
even  if  they  would,  transport  themselves  in  a 
moment,  at  a  mere  wave  of  his  wand,  across 
the  intervening  bogs  and  forests  which  the 
lapse  of  years  had  rendered  impassable.  He 
never  appears  to  have  had  a  single  glimpse 
of  the  truth  that  the  essential  business  of 
the  statesman  is  to  be  always  moving  from 
the  past  to  the  future  without  ever  letting  the 
bridge  between  them  break  down.  The  princi- 
pal food  of  a  political  people  is  custom,  and  to 
break  the  bridge  is  to  cut  off  the  only  source 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER  67 

of  its  supply.  The  greatest  proof  that  Crom- 
well was  really  a  statesman  and  not  a  mere 
political  emergency  man  of  unusual  character 
and  ability  is  that  in  his  last  years  he  was 
evidently  seeing  more  and  more  plainly  that 
the  right  metaphor  for  a  statesman  is  taken 
from  grafting  and  not  from  M  root  and 
branch  "  operations.  It  is  clear  that  he  had 
seen  that  political  branches  may  be  pruned 
away  but  roots  can  very  seldom  be  safely 
disturbed;  and  that  among  the  roots  in 
English  politics  were  a  hereditary  Monarchy 
and  an  established  Church.  Dynasty  and 
formularies  might  perhaps  be  safely  changed ; 
but  the  things  themselves  were  of  the  root, 
and  the  tree  would  not  flourish  if  they  were 
touched.  It  is  characteristic  of  Milton  that 
in  both  these  matters  he  was  strongly  opposed 
to  the  policy  towards  which  Cromwell  was 
feeling  his  way.  Ten  years  had  taught  him 
nothing,  and  the  death  of  Cromwell  found 
him  as  blind  to  political  possibilities  as  the 
death  of  Charles  I. 

One  would  like  to  know  something  of  the 
relations  between  the  two  greatest  men  of 
the  Commonwealth.  But  there  is  little  or 
nothing  to  know.  It  is  plain  that  in  most 
matters  they  must  have  been  in  close  agree- 
ment ;  and  in  a  few,  as  in  the  business  of  the 


68  MILTON 

Piedmont  massacres,  the  two  great  hearts 
must  have  beaten  as  one,  while  the  sword 
of  Cromwell  stood  ready  drawn  behind  the 
trumpet  of  Milton's  noble  prose  and  nobler 
verse.  The  only  surviving  act  of  personal 
contact  between  them  is  to  be  found  in 
Milton's  sonnet;  and  that  is  a  public  tribute 
with  no  suggestion  of  private  intimacy  in  it. 
Indeed,  as  Masson  has  pointed  out,  it  may 
easily  be  taken  to  mean  more  than  it  really 
does;  for  it  was  not  written  because  Milton 
could  not  keep  silence  about  his  admiration 
of  Cromwell,  but  rather,  as  its  full  title  shows, 
as  a  petition  or  appeal  to  Cromwell  to  save 
the  nation  from  parliamentary  proposals  for 
the  setting  up  of  a  State  Church  and  for 
limiting  the  toleration  of  dissent  from  it. 
The  sonnet,  then,  proves  less  than  it  has 
sometimes  been  made  to  prove;  and  in  any 
case  it  proves  no  intimacy.  Perhaps  after 
all,  in  the  case  of  Milton  as  in  that  of  most 
men  who  deal  with  public  affairs,  we  are  apt 
to  exaggerate  the  importance  in  their  daily 
lives  of  these  visible  official  activities.  The 
world  thinks  it  knows  men  who  fight  battles, 
or  make  speeches,  or  write  books;  but  it 
knows  nothing  of  their  private  thoughts  or 
studies  and  still  less  of  their  private  loves 
and  joys  and  sorrows  which  to  themselves 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  69 

and  in  truth  are  much  the  most  real  part 
of  their  lives.  So  with  Milton  during  these 
years;  his  wife  and  little  children  may  have 
been,  his  second  wife  and  such  friends  as 
Cyriack  Skinner  and  Henry  Lawrence  and 
Lady  Ranelagh  and  the  poet  Marvell  certainly 
were,  much  greater  realities  to  him  in  his 
daily  thoughts  than  either  the  hated  Salmasius 
and  Morus  of  the  pamphlets  or  the  admired 
Cromwell  of  the  sonnet.  The  "  weekly  table  " 
he  is  said  to  have  kept,  at  the  expense  of  the 
State,  for  foreign  ministers,  must  have  pro- 
vided interesting  talk;  but  the  true  Milton 
cannot  have  lived  in  these  gatherings  so  fully 
at  the  time  or  remembered  them  afterwards 
so  affectionately  as  those  other  more  intimate 
parties  of  which  he  gives  us  a  picture  in  the 
two  sonnets  to  Lawrence  and  Skinner  which, 
for  lovers  of  poetry,  look  so  pleasantly  back 
to  Horace  and  so  pleasantly  forward  to 
Cowper  and  Tennyson. 

"  Lawrence,  of  virtuous  father  virtuous  son, 
Now  that  the  fields  are  dank,  and  ways 

are  mire, 
Where  shall  we  sometimes  meet,  and  by 

the  fire 
Help  waste  a  sullen  day,  what  may  be 
won 
From  the  hard  season  gaining?    Time  will 
run 


70  MILTON 

On  smoother,  till  Favonius  re-inspire 
The   frozen   earth,    and   clothe   in   fresh 

attire 
The  lily  and  rose,  that  neither  sowed  nor 

spun. 
What  neat  repast  shall  feast  us,  light  and 

choice, 
Of  Attic  taste,  with  wine,  whence  we  may 

rise  ^_ 

To  hear  the  lute  well  touched,  or  artful 

voice 
Warble  immortal  notes  and  Tuscan  air? 
He  who  of  those  delights  can  judge,  and 

spare 
To  interpose  them  oft,  is  not  unwise." 

This  is  his  own  graver  and  older  parallel  to 
what  his  nephew  tells  us  of  his  schoolmastering 
days  when  he  would  turn  from  "  hard  study 
and  spare  diet "  to  "  drop  once  a  month  or 
so  into  the  society  of  some  young  sparks  of 
his  acquaintance,"  and  with  them  "  would  so 
far  make  bold  with  his  body  as  now  and  then 
to  keep  a  gawdy  day."  The  sonnet  shows 
that  the  poet  is  still  the  poet  of  U Allegro  and 
II  Penseroso,  no  narrow  fanatic,  but  a  lover 
of  company  and  the  arts,  and  of  the  richness 
and  fulness  of  life.  Such  occasions  as  that 
it  describes  must  have  been  oases  in  the 
desert  of  controversy  and  public  business 
abroad  and  of  blindness  and  loneliness  at 
home.     He  did  not  live  long  in  Whitehall, 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  71 

moving  in  1652  to  a  house  overlooking  St. 
James's  Park,  near  what  is  now  Queen  Anne's 
Gate.  There  his  first  wife  died  in  1653,  or 
1654,  and  her  short-lived  successor  too ;  there 
he  lived  during  the  remaining  years  of  the 
Commonwealth,  working  at  his  pamphlets  and 
State  papers,  even  beginning  Paradise  Lost, 
with  young  friends  to  read  to  him,  write  for 
him,  lead  their  blind  great  man  about  in  the 
Park  or  elsewhere,  till  the  catastrophe  of  1660 
arrived  and  it  was  no  longer  safe  for  the 
defender  of  Regicide  to  be  seen  in  the  streets. 

Why  Milton  was  not  hanged  at  the  Restora-  </ 
tion  is  still  something  of  a  mystery.  His 
name  must  have  been  more  hatefully  known 
to  the  returning  exiles  than  that  of  any  one 
except  the  dead  Cromwell  whose  death  did 
not  save  his  body  from  a  grim  ceremony  at 
Tyburn.  He  had  not  only  defended  Charles 
I's  execution  before  all  Europe,  and  in  a  tone 
almost  of  exultation,  but  he  had  pursued  the 
whole  Stuart  family  with  vituperation  and 
contempt.  Even  in  the  very  last  weeks,  when 
the  bells  were  already  almost  ringing  for 
Charles  II,  he  had  dared  to  raise  his  voice 
against  the  "  abjured  and  detested  thraldom 
of  kingship  " ;  declaring  that  he  would  not  be 
silent  though  he  should  but  speak  "  to  trees 
and  stones  :    and  had  none  to  cry  to,  but 


72  MILTON 

with  the  prophet  '  O  Earth,  Earth,  Earth  ! ' 
to  tell  the  very  soil  itself  what  her  perverse 
inhabitants  are  deaf  to," — a  passage,  if  inter- 
preted by  its  original  context,  of  awful  im- 
precation upon  Charles  I.  A  man  so  famous, 
so  utterly  unrepentant,  so  defiant  to  the  very 
end,  seemed  to  challenge  to  himself  the  gallows. 
That  his  challenge  would  receive  its  natural 
answer  was  the  openly  expressed  opinion  of  his 
enemies.  No  doubt  it  was  also  the  fear  of  his 
friends,  who  concealed  him  in  Smithfield  from 
May  till  August  1660.  By  the  24th  of  August 
the  danger  was  over.  The  Act  of  Indemnity, 
which  was  a  pardon  to  all  political  offenders 
not  by  name  excepted  in  it,  became  law  on 
that  day;  and  Milton's  was  not  one  of  the 
excepted  names.  How  was  that  managed? 
There  are  various  stories;  perhaps  each  has 
some  truth  in  it;  many  influences  may  have 
combined.  One  is  that  he  had  saved  Davenant 
in  his  danger  some  years  before  and  now  the 
Cavalier  poet  in  his  turn  saved  the  Puritan. 
But  Davenant  was  not  in  Parliament,  and  the 
real  work  must  have  been  done  by  a  group  of 
friends  who  were.  The  most  important  of 
them  seem  to  have  been  Annesley  (afterwards 
Lord  Anglesey),  Sir  Thomas  Clarges,  who 
was  Monk's  brother-in-law,  Monk's  secretary 
Morrice,   and   the   poet's   less   powerful   but 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  73 

still  more  devoted  friend  Andrew  Marvell. 
Between  them  somehow  they  saved  him, 
aided  no  doubt  by  the  general  pity  for  a 
blind  man,  the  general  respect  for  his  learn- 
ing which  found  expression  even  in  that 
moment  and  even  in  Royalist  pamphlets, 
and,  one  may  hope,  by  the  knowledge  of  a 
few  of  them  that  this  was  a  man  of  genius 
from  whom  there  might  be  great  things  yet 
to  come.  The  names  of  those  who  thus  made 
possible  the  greatest  poem  in  the  English 
language  deserve  lasting  record ;  and  a  word 
of  gratitude  may  be  added  to  Clarendon  and 
to  Charles  II  for  refraining  from  saying  the 
easy  and  not  unnatural  word  which  would 
have  been  instantly  fatal  to  their  old  enemy. 
The  odd  thing  is  that  he  was  arrested  after 
all.  There  had  been  an  order  of  the  House 
of  Commons  for  his  arrest  and  for  the  burning 
of  his  books,  possibly,  as  Masson  thinks, 
obtained  by  his  friends  to  make  it  seem 
unnecessary  to  except  him  in  the  Indemnity 
Bill.  The  books  were  duly  burnt,  or  such 
copies  of  them  as  came  to  the  hands  of  the 
hangman ;  and  ultimately,  at  some  uncertain 
date,  Milton  himself  was  got  into  the  custody 
of  the  Sergeant-at-Arms.  He  was  soon  re- 
leased, and  the  story  would  not  be  worth 
relating  but  for  a  curious  proof  it  gives  of  the 

C2 


74  MILTON 

obstinate  courage  of  the  poet.  The  House 
ordered  his  release  on  December  15 ;  and  one 
would  have  supposed  that  he  would  have 
been  glad  to  escape  into  obscurity  and  safety 
again  on  any  terms.  But  no ;  the  Sergeant- 
at-Arms  demanded  high  fees  which  Milton 
thought  unreasonable;  and  even  then,  when 
he  had  almost  felt  the  hangman's  rope  on 
his  neck,  he  would  not  be  bullied  by  any 
man.  He  refused  to  pay:  and  though  the 
Solicitor-General  ominously  remarked  that  he 
deserved  hanging,  his  friends  got  the  fees 
referred  to  a  committee  and  presumably 
reduced.  Before  the  beginning  of  1661  he 
was  definitely  a  free  man  to  live  his  final 
fourteen  years  of  political  defeat,  isolation 
and  silence,  of  unparalleled  poetic  fertility,  and, 
before  the  end,  of  acknowledged  poetic  fame. 
He  did  not  return  any  more  to  the  fashion- 
able and  therefore  dangerous  neighbourhood 
of  Whitehall,  but  lived  the  rest  of  his  life  in  a 
succession  of  houses  in  or  near  the  city,  ending 
in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  Fields,  where  he 
died.  His  friends  must  for  years  have  feared 
that  he  might  be  attacked  and  perhaps 
murdered  by  some  drunken  Cavalier  revellers 
accidentally  coming  across  the  old  regicide. 
And  in  spite  of  the  Act  of  Indemnity  he  can 
hardly  have  felt  absolutely  comfortable  on 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  75 

the  side  of  the  law  when  so  late  as  1664  his 
Tenure  of  Kings  was  denounced  by  the  censor 
as  still  extant  and  an  unfortunate  printer 
was  hanged,  drawn  and  quartered  for  issuing 
a  sort  of  new  version  of  it.  Misfortunes  with- 
out and  fears  within  might  be  the  summing 
up,  if  not  of  the  poet's,  at  least  of  the  man's 
life  during  these  first  years  after  the  Re- 
storation. To  begin  with,  he  was  a  much 
poorer  man.  His  salary  as  Secretary  was,  of 
course,  gone.  But  besides  that  he  had  lost 
£2000,  equal  to  about  £7000  now,  which  he 
had  invested  in  Commonwealth  Securities,  as 
well  as  some  confiscated  property  he  had 
bought  of  the  Chapter  of  Westminster;  and 
he  was  soon  to  lose,  at  least  temporarily,  the 
rent  he  received  from  his  father's  house  in 
Bread  Street  which  was  destroyed  by  the  Fire 
of  London.  Masson  calculates  that  he  was 
left  after  the  Restoration  with  an  income  about 
equal  to  £700  of  our  money  which  his  further 
losses  and  outlay  on  his  daughters  had  re- 
duced to  £300  or  £350  before  his  death ;  not 
quite  poverty  even  at  the  end,  but  something 
very  different  from  what  the  eldest  son  of  a 
rich  ma^n  had  been  accustomed  to.  A  graver 
misfortune  was  the  gout  which  afflicted  him 
for  the  rest  of  his  life  and  gave  him  so  much 
pain  that  he  made  little  of  his  blindness  in 


76  MILTON 

comparison  with  it.  Worst  of  all  was  his 
unhappy  relation  to  his  daughters.  That  is 
the  ugliest  thing  in  the  story  of  his  life.  How 
things  might  have  gone  with  his  son,  if  the 
baby  boy  had  lived,  one  does  not  know ;  but 
his  oriental  views  of  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual inferiority  of  women,  which  doubled  the 
dangers  of  their  fascinations,  made  him  certain 
to  be  a  despotic  father  to  three  motherless 
girls.  And  so  he  was.  He  had  plenty  of 
young  men  eager  for  the  privilege  of  reading 
to  him  :  but  of  course  they  could  not  be  always 
with  him,  and  the  result  was  that  dreadful 
picture  which  comes  to  us  from  his  nephew, 
no  unfriendly  witness,  of  the  daughters  "  con- 
demned to  the  performance  of  reading  and 
exactly  pronouncing  of  all  the  languages  of 
whatever  book  he  should  at  one  time  or  other 
think  fit  to  peruse ;  viz.  the  Hebrew  (and,  I 
think,  the  Syriac),  the  Greek,  the  Latin,  the 
Italian,  Spanish  and  French,"  none  of  which 
languages  they  understood.  Nor  did  he  show 
any  desire  that  they  should;  saying  grimly 
that  one  tongue  was  enough  for  a  woman. 
History  and  fiction  are  alike  full  of  the 
tragedies  that  result  from  the  blindness  of 
extraordinary  minds  to  ordinary  duties;  and 
Milton's  case  is  one  of  the  saddest.  The 
daughters  cheated  him  and  made  away  with 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  77 

his  books;  he  spoke  of  them  gravely  and 
repeatedly  as  his  "  unkind  children  M ;  one  of 
them  is  even  reported,  on  very  good  evidence, 
to  have  said,  at  his  third  marriage  in  1663, 
that  "  that  was  no  news  to  hear  of  his  wedding 
but,  if  she  could  hear  of  his  death,  that  was 
something."  At  last  it  was  thought  better 
that  he  and  they  should  part ;  and  they  were 
put  out,  at  considerable  expense  to  their 
father,  to  learn  embroidery  work  and  other 
"  curious  and  ingenious  manufactures  M  for 
their  living.  It  is  pleasant  to  hear  that  the 
youngest,  Deborah,  who  was  visited  by 
Addison  not  long  before  he  died,  and  received 
fifty  guineas  from  Queen  Caroline,  was  "  in  a 
transport "  of  delight  when  shown  a  portrait 
of  her  father,  crying  out  "  'Tis  my  father,  'tis 
my  dear  father,  I  see  him;  'tis  him;  'tis  the 
very  man  !  here,  here  !  "  as  she  pointed  to 
some  of  the  features.  So  one  likes  to  be  told, 
on  her  authority,  that  he  was  delightful  com- 
pany and  "  the  life  of  the  conversation,  full 
of  unlaffected  cheerfulness  and  civility  "  when 
he  had  his  little  parties  of  friends.  And  to 
us,  if  not  to  her,  it  is  a  pleasant  story  that  she 
could  still  repeat  many  lines  from  Homer, 
Euripides  and  Ovid,  though  she  said  she  did 
not  understand  Greek  or  Latin.  The  wife  of 
a  Spitalfields  weaver  must  at  last  have  felt 


78  MILTON 

some  pride  in  these  survivals  of  her  childish 
drudgery,  proof  audible  to  all  men,  if  to  her 
unintelligible,  that  she  was  the  daughter  of 
Mr.  Milton,  the  great  scholar  and  poet. 

No  more  need  to  be  said  of  sorrow  or  failure. 
The  rest  is  a  serene  and  productive  old  age. 
Paradise  Lost  was  published  in  1667,  Paradise 
Regained  and  Samson  in  1671.  Besides  these 
there  was,  in  1673,  a  new  edition  of  his  earlier 
poems  reprinted,  with  additions  from  that  of 
1645;  and  many  publications  of  prose  works 
mostly  written  in  earlier  years  but  never 
printed,  such  as  his  History  of  Britain,  and 
little  books  on  Education,  Logic  and  Grammar. 
He  kept  up  his  strenuous  life  of  study  and 
composition  apparently  to  the  end.  He  is 
said  to  have  got  up  at  four  or  five  in  the 
morning,  and,  after  hearing  a  chapter  or  two 
from  the  Hebrew  Bible  and  breakfasting,  to 
have  passed  the  five  hours  before  his  midday 
dinner  dictating  or  having  some  book  read  to 
him.  In  the  afternoon  he  would  walk  a  little 
in  his  garden;  all  his  life  a  garden  had  been 
one  of  the  things  he  would  not  do  without. 
Then  music  and  more  private  study  carried 
him  on  to  an  Horatian  supper  of  olives  or 
other  "  light  things  " ;  and  so  to  a  pipe  of 
tobacco,  a  glass  of  water  and  bed.  He  drank 
but  little  wine,  and  that  only  with  his  meals. 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  79 

Such  a  way  of  life  deserved  a  healthful  old  age, 
which,  but  for  that  healthy  man's  disease  the 
gout,  he  had,  and  a  death  such  as  he  had, 
so  easy  as  to  be  imperceptible  to  the  by- 
standers. That  was  on  November  8,  1674. 
Four  days  later  his  body  was  buried  in  the 
church  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  where  his 
grave  may  still  be  seen;  the  funeral  being 
accompanied  by  "  all  his  learned  and  great 
friends  in  London,  not  without  a  concourse 
of  the  vulgar." 

By  that  time  the  battle  of  his  life  had  been 
won.  The  astonishing  achievements  of  his 
last  years  had  more  than  fulfilled  the  high 
promise  and  proud  words  of  his  long  distant 
youth.  Perhaps  no  seven  years  in  all  literary 
history  provide  a  finer  record  of  poetic  genius 
triumphing  over  difficulties  external  and  in- 
ternal than  these  last  seven  of  Milton's  life 
from  1667  to  1674.  They  had  their  reward 
and  not  only  from  posterity.  There  is  a  still 
lingering  delusion,  based  chiefly  on  the  five 
pounds  paid  for  the  first  edition  of  Paradise 
Lost,  that  Milton's  greatness  was  little  recog- 
nized in  his  lifetime.  The  truth  is  the  exact 
reverse.  He  had  far  more  chance  of  hearing 
his  own  praises,  if  he  cared  for  that,  than 
most  of  the  great  English  poets  :  than  Keats 
and  Shelley,  for  instance;  than  Wordsworth, 


80  MILTON 

at  least  till  he  was  old ;  nay,  in  all  probability 
than  Shakspeare  himself.  Which  of  them 
heard  the  most  popular  poet  of  their  day  say 
of  them  anything  at  all  like  Dryden's  famous 
and  generous  "  This  man  cuts  us  all  out  and 
the  ancients  too"?  It  is  not  even  true  that 
Paradise  Lost  sold  badly.  On  the  contrary, 
in  a  year  and  a  half  from  the  day  of  publica- 
tion over  thirteen  hundred  copies  had  been 
sold,  from  which  the  author  received  £10 
and  the  publisher,  it  is  believed,  £50  or  £60. 
He  would  be  a  sanguine  publisher  to-day  who 
would  be  quite  certain  of  making  in  eighteen 
months  the  modern  equivalent  of  this  sum, 
say  £180,  out  of  a  new  epic,  even  if  it  were 
as  great  as  Milton's. 

But  the  money  question  was  not  of  the  first 
importance  to  Milton  and  is  of  none  to  us. 
The  interesting  thing  is  the  almost  immediate 
recognition  of  the  greatness  of  the  poem. 
Nothing  in  the  world  could  be  more  alien  to 
the  tone  of  the  society  and  literature  of  the 
London  of  Charles  II  than  this  long  Biblical 
Puritan  poem  with  its  scarcely  veiled  attacks 
on  the  revived  Monarchy  and  Episcopacy  and 
its  entirely  unveiled  attacks  on  the  fashionable 
men  of  Belial.  Yet  it  was  from  the  very  high 
priests  of  this  society  that  the  most  unstinted 
praise    came.     Of    its    professional    men    of 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  81 

letters  Dryden  was  already  rapidly  advancing 
to  the  unquestioned  primacy  which  was  soon 
to  be  his,  and  to  remain  his  for  his  life ;  of  its 
amateurs  Lord  Dorset  had  perhaps  the  most 
brilliant  reputation.  It  was  these  two  men 
who,  more  than  any  others,  made  the  town 
recognize  the  greatness  of  Milton.  Both  were 
as  unlike  Milton  as  men  could  be,  and  Dryden 
had  just  committed  himself  to  a  strong 
championship  of  rhymed  verse  as  against 
blank.  There  is  nowhere  a  finer  proof  of  the 
compelling  power  of  great  art  upon  those  who 
know  it  when  they  see  it  than  the  unbounded 
praise  with  which  Dryden  at  once  saluted 
Milton.  The  fact  that  his  admiration  at  first 
took  the  absurd  form  of  turning  Milton's  epic 
into  a  "  heroic  opera  "  in  rhyme  does  not 
detract  from  the  significance  of  his  writing 
publicly  within  a  year  of  Milton's  death  that 
the  blind  old  regicide's  poem  was  "  one  of 
the  greatest,  most  noble  and  sublime  which 
either  this  age  or  nation  has  produced,"  and 
to  this  he  was  to  add,  thirteen  years  later,  the 
still  bolder  tribute  of  the  well-known  epigram 
about  "  three  poets  in  three  distant  ages  born  M 
which  gives  Milton  a  place  above  Homer  and 
Virgil.  The  lines  are  in  detail  absurd;  but 
their  absurdity  does  not  destroy  the  fact  that 
the  intellectual  life  of   England  was   never 


82  MILTON 

keener,  or  more  eager  to  welcome  talent  in 
art  or  letters,  than  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II ; 
and  nothing  is  clearer  proof  of  it  than  the 
honours  received  by  the  rebel  Milton  from  a 
Court  composer  like  Henry  Lawes,  a  Court 
physician  like  Samuel  Barrow,  a  statesman 
and  minister  like  Lord  Anglesey,  and  a  poet 
laureate  like  Dryden. 

So  we  may  think  of  him  happily  enough 
in  these  last  years.  He  had  now  done  the 
work  which  from  his  early  manhood  he  had 
felt  it  was  his  task  in  life  to  do.  When  he 
was  not  much  over  thirty  he  had  boldly 
written  in  public  of  what  his  mind,  "  in  the 
spacious  circuits  of  her  musing,  hath  libejty 
to  propose  to  herself,  though  of  highest  hope 
and  hardest  attempting;  whether  that  epic 
form  whereof  the  two  poems  of  Homer,  and 
those  other  two  of  Virgil  and  Tasso,  are  a 
diffuse  and  the  book  of  Job  a  brief  model  .  .  . 
or  whether  those  dramatic  constitutions, 
wherein  Sophocles  and  Euripides  reign,  shall 
be  found  more  doctrinal  and  exemplary  to  a 
nation."  For  the  moment  nothing  seemed 
to  come  of  these  high  words;  but  before  he 
died  not  one  only,  but  both  of  his  dreams, 
the  drama  as  well  as  the  epic,  were  accom- 
plished facts.  Paradise  Lost,  begun  as  a 
drama,  had  become  the  greatest  of  modern 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  83 

epics;  and  the  abandoned  drama  had  re- 
appeared in  Samson,  not  the  greatest  of 
English  tragedies,  but  the  one  which  best 
recalls  the  peculiar  greatness  of  the  drama  of 
Greece.  Self-confident  young  men  have  always 
been  common  enough,  but  there  are  two 
differences  between  them  and  Milton  :  their 
performance  falls  far  short  of  their  promise 
instead  of  exceeding  it;  and  neither  promise 
nor  performance  is  marked  by  this  exalting 
and  purifying  sense  of  a  thing  divinely  inspired 
and  divinely  aided.  Such  work  can  wait,  as 
his  did,  being  such  as  is  "  not  to  be  raised 
from  the  heat  of  youth  or  the  vapours  of 
wine ;  like  that  which  flows  at  waste  from  the 
pen  of  some  vulgar  amourist,  or  the  trencher 
fury  of  a  rhyming  parasite;  nor  to  be  ob- 
tained by  the  invocation  of  dame  memory  and 
her  siren  daughters,  but  by  devout  prayer  to 
that  eternal  Spirit  who  can  enrich  with  all 
utterance  and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  his 
seraphim,  with  the  hallowed  fire  of  his  altar,  to 
touch  and  purify  the  lips  of  whom  he  pleases." 
Now  the  task  is  done ;  and  he  can  sit  alone 
in  his  upstairs  room  in  Artillery  Walk  and 
thank  God  that  in  spite  of  blindness,  private 
sorrows  and  public  disappointments,  he  had 
been  enabled  at  last  to  bear  the  witness  of  a 
work  of  immortal  beauty  to  the  high  truth 


84  MILTON 

that  had  been  in  him  even  from  a  boy.  So 
it  may  have  been  in  the  graver  moments  of 
solitude;  while,  as  we  know  from  several 
sources,  there  were  other  times,  when  he 
would  enjoy  the  companionship  of  friends 
and  the  homage  of  learned  strangers  by 
whom  we  are  told  he  was  "  much  visited, 
more  than  he  did  desire."  The  picture  sug- 
gested to  us  is  that  of  a  man  who  at  sixty- 
five,  then  a  greater  age  than  now,  retained 
all  his  powers  of  mind  and  much  of  the 
physical  beauty  which  had  been  so  remarkable 
in  his  youth ;  who  was  gracious  but  somewhat 
reserved  and  dignified  with  strangers;  a 
delightful  companion  to  friends  and  especially 
to  younger  men ;  full  of  literature,  especially 
of  poetry,  and  with  a  memory  that  enabled 
him  to  recite  long  passages  from  Homer  and 
Virgil;  above  all,  an  ardent  lover  of  music, 
making  a  practice,  so  far  as  possible,  of  hearing 
some,  whether  vocal  or  instrumental,  every 
afternoon.  His  ears  were  eyes  to  him;  and 
when  he  heard  a  lady  sing  finely  he  would 
say  :  "  Now  will  I  swear  this  lady  is  hand- 
some." All  kinds  of  music,  and  not  only  the 
severer,  were  delightful  to  the  "  organ- voice 
of  England." 

That  is  not  the  least  interesting  thing  about 
him.    The    greatest    of    England's    Puritans 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  85 

was  also  the  greatest  of  her  artists.  He 
had  nothing  in  him  of  the  morbid  scrupulosity 
which  is  such  an  inhuman  feature  in  French 
Jansenism  and  some  of  the  English  sects. 
His  was  a  large  nature  which  demanded  a 
free  expansion  of  life.  Lonely  figure  as  he  is 
in  our  literary  history,  with  no  real  pre- 
decessors or  followers,  his  mighty  arch  yet 
bridges  the  gulf  between  Elizabeth  and  the 
Revolution,  and  is  of  nearer  or  less  distant 
kin  to  Shakspeare  than  to  Pope.  His  prose 
is  the  swan  song  of  the  old  eloquence,  as 
inspired  and  as  confused  as  an  oracle.  To 
read  it  when  it  is  at  its  best  is  to  soar  on 
wings  through  the  empyrean  and  despise 
Swift  and  Addison  walking  in  neat  politeness 
on  the  pavement.  There  as  everywhere,  in 
his  verse,  in  his  character,  in  his  mind,  in 
his  life,  he  has  the  strength  and  the  weakness 
of  an  aristocrat.  The  youth  who  in  his 
Cambridge  days  was  "  esteemed  a  virtuous 
person  yet  not  to  be  ignorant  of  his  parts  " 
did  not  belie  the  opinion  formed  of  him  in 
either  of  those  respects.  His  Republicanism 
was  of  the  proud  Roman  sort,  and  at  least  as 
near  Coriolanus  as  Gracchus;  a  boundless 
faith  in  the  State  and  a  boundless  desire  to 
spend  and  be  spent  in  its  service,  a  total  and 
scornful  indifference  to  the  opinions  of  all 


86  MILTON 

those,  though  they  might  be  five-sixths  of 
the  nation,  who  did  not  desire  to  be  served  in 
the  way  which  he  had  decided  to  be  for  their 
good.  The  modern  way  of  deciding  matters 
of  State  by  counting  heads  may  very  likely 
be  the  best  of  many  unsatisfactory  ways  of 
accomplishing  a  very  difficult  business;  but 
it  has  always  been  peculiarly  exasperating  to 
men  of  genius  who  see  their  way  plainly  and 
cannot  understand  why  a  million  blind  men 
are  to  keep  them  out  of  it.  Milton  liked  the 
voice  of  the  majority  well  enough  when  he 
could  plead  it  against  Charles  I;  but  when 
he  found  it  calling  for  Charles  II  he  treated 
it  as  a  mere  impertinent  absurdity;  the  vain 
babble  of  a  "  misguided  and  abused  multi- 
tude "  with  whom  wise  men  have  nothing  to 
do  except  to  keep  them  in  their  place.  And 
it  is  in  the  latter  attitude  that  he  is  most 
really  himself.  His  is,  of  course,  an  aris- 
tocracy of  mind  and  character,  not  of  birth 
and  wealth;  but  the  self-sufficient  scorn 
which  was  almost  a  virtue  in  Aristotle's  eyes, 
and  is  in  ours  the  besetting  sin  of  even  the 
noblest  of  aristocrats,  is  too  frequent  a  note 
in  all  his  prose,  and  even  in  his  poetry;  and 
it  is  sometimes  poured  out  upon  those  who 
are  fitter  subjects  for  tenderness  than  for 
contempt.     One  can  scarcely  imagine  a  child 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  87 

or  an  ignorant  man  being  quite  at  ease  in 
Milton's  company. 

But  these  are  the  penalties  that  greatness 
has  too  often  to  pay  for  being  itself.  So  long 
as  we  remain  human  beings  and  not  divine, 
it  will  be  found  hard  to  unite  humility,  ease 
of  manner,  and  the  glad  sufferance  of  fools 
with  a  mind  struggling  in  a  storm  of  sublime 
thoughts,  with  powers  that  are  and  know 
themselves  to  be  far  above  those  of  ordinary 
men.  It  will  never  be  easy  for  men  of  supreme 
genius  to  behave  to  their  inferiors  as  if  they 
were  their  equals.  But  that  is  not  the  side 
of  Milton  of  which  we  ought  to  think  most 
often  now.  It  is  more  just  as  well  as  more 
merciful  to  him,  and  it  is  of  more  use  to 
ourselves,  to  fix  our  eyes  on  his  strength, 
and  not  on  the  weakness  that  more  or  less 
inevitably  accompanied  it.  The  ancients  ad- 
mired strength  more  than  the  moderns  have, 
at  least  until  lately.  But  no  one  can  refuse 
to  admire  such  strength  as  Milton's,  so  con- 
tinuous, so  triumphant  over  exceptional  ob- 
stacles, so  disdainful  of  all  petty  or  personal 
ends.  There  is  a  majesty  about  it  to  which 
one  scarcely  knows  any  real  parallel.  Strength 
implies  purpose  and  art  implies  unity  of  con- 
ception ;  the  instinct  of  art  was  only  less  strong 
in  Milton  than  the  resolute  will;    so  that  it 


88  MILTON 

is  not  surprising  that  scarcely  any  life  has 
such  unity  as  his.  It  is  itself  a  perfect  work 
of  art.  If  we  put  aside,  as  we  may  fairly, 
the  partial  political  inconsistencies,  the  rest 
is  absolutely  of  one  piece;  a  great  building, 
nobly  planned  from  the  beginning  and  nobly 
executed  to  the  last  harmonious  detail  of 
the  original  design.  We  men  are,  most  of 
us,  weak  creatures  who  accomplish  but  the 
tiniest  fragments  of  even  such  poor  designs 
as  we  make  for  our  lives.  There  is  something 
that  uplifts  us  in  the  spectacle  of  the  triumph- 
ant completion  of  so  great  a  plan  as  the  life 
of  Milton.  We  are  exalted  by  the  thought 
that,  after  all,  we  are  of  the  same  flesh  and 
blood,  nay,  even  of  the  same  breed,  as  this 
wonderful  man.  To  read  the  Paradise  Lost 
is  to  realize,  in  the  highest  degree,  how  the 
poet's  imagination  can  impose  a  majestic 
order  on  the  tumultuous  confusion  of  human 
speech  and  knowledge.  To  read  its  author's 
life  is  to  realize,  with  equally  exalting  clear- 
ness, how  a  strong  man's  will  can  so  victori- 
ously mould  a  world  of  adverse  circumstances 
that  affliction,  defeat — nay,  even  the  threaten- 
ing shadow  of  death  itself — are  made  the  very 
instruments  by  which  he  becomes  that  which 
he  has,  from  the  beginning  of  his  years,  chosen 
for  himself  to  be. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   EARLIER  POEMS 

We  think  to-day  of  Milton  chiefly  as  the 
author  of  Paradise  Lost,  as  we  think  of  Wren 
as  the  builder  of  St.  Paul's.  And  we  are 
right.  When  a  man  has  been  the  creator  of 
the  only  very  great  building  in  the  world 
which  bears  upon  it  from  the  first  stone  to 
the  last  the  mark  of  a  single  mind,  his  other 
achievements,  even  though  they  include 
Greenwich,  Hampton  Court,  Trinity  College 
Library,  and  some  fifty  churches,  inevitably 
fall  into  the  background.  So  when  the  world 
has  admitted  that  a  poet  has  disputed  the 
supreme  palm  of  epic  with  Homer  and  Virgil, 
it  hardly  cares  to  remember  that  he  has  also 
challenged  all  rivals  in  such  forms  as  the 
Pastoral  Elegy,  the  Mask,  and  the  Sonnet. 
De  minimis  non  curat  might  be  applied  to 
such  cases  without  any  very  violent  ex- 
travagance. The  first  thought  that  must 
always  rise  to  the  mind  at  the  mention 
of  Milton's  name  must  be  the  stupendous 
achievement  of  Paradise  Lost 

Yet  if  Milton  had  been  hanged  at  Tyburn 
89 


90  MILTON 

in  1660  he  would  still  unquestionably  rank 
with  the  half-dozen  greatest  of  the  English 
poets.  Chaucer  and  Spenser  would  then  have 
ranked  after  Shakspeare  as  higher  names 
than  his  :  and  possibly  also  Wordsworth, 
Keats  and  Shelley.  But  he  could  have  feared 
no  other  rival :  for  Dryden  is  too  much  a 
mere  man  of  letters,  Pope  too  much  a  mere 
wit,  Byron  too  exclusively  a  rhetorician, 
Tennyson  too  exclusively  an  artist,  to  rank 
with  a  man  in  whom  burned  the  divine  fire 
of  Lycidas  and  the  great  Ode.  What  would 
Milton's  fame  have  rested  upon  if  he  had 
not  lived  to  write  Paradise  Lost  and  its  two 
successors?  Upon  the  volume  published  in 
the  year  1645,  the  year  of  Naseby,  when 
people,  one  would  have  supposed,  were  not 
thinking  much  of  poetry,  and  those  who  were 
most  likely  to  be  doing  so  were  just  those 
least  inclined  to  look  for  it  from  John  Milton, 
the  Puritan  pamphleteer.  Yet  in  that  little 
book  was  heard  for  the  last  time  the  voice, 
now  raised  above  itself,  of  the  old  poetry 
which  the  Cavaliers  and  courtiers  had  loved. 

No  single  volume  has  ever  contained  so 
much  fine  English  verse  by  an  unknown 
or  almost  unknown  poet.  It  is  true  that 
Lycidas  and  Comus  had  been  printed  before, 
but    Comus  had  appeared  anonymously  and 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  91 

Lycidas  had  been  signed  only  with  initials. 
So  that  only  friends,  or  people  behind  the 
scenes  in  the  literary  world,  could  know  any- 
thing of  Milton's  poetry.  Nor  does  he  seem 
to  have  been  very  anxious  that  they  should. 
The  other  contributors  to  the  volume  in 
memory  of  Edward  King  gave  their  names : 
the  only  signature  to  Lycidas  is  J.  M.  It  was 
Lawes  the  composer,  not  Milton  the  author, 
who  published  Comics  in  1637.  Milton's 
feelings  about  it  are  indicatedby^the  motto 
on  the  title  page — 

"  Eheu  quid  volui  misero  mihi  I    floribus 
Austrum 
Perditus— " 

Quotations  can  often  say  for  us  what  we 
cannot  say  for  ourselves.  What  Virgil  says 
for  Milton  is  "  Alas  what  is  this  that  I  have 
done  ?  poor  fool  that  I  am,  could  not  I  have 
kept  my  tender  buds  of  verse  a  little  longer 
from  the  cutting  blasts  of  public  criticism  ?  " 
Yet  no  one  knew  better  than  Milton  that 
Comus  was  incomparably  the  greatest  of  the 
masks.  So  in  the  sonnet  on  reaching  the 
age  of  twenty-three  he  says  that  his  "  late 
spring  no  bud  or  blossom  shew'th."  Yet  he 
had  already  written  the  Ode  on  the  Nativity, 
a    performance    sufficient,    one    would    have 


92  MILTON 

thought,  to  give  a  young  poet  reasonable 
self-satisfaction  in  what  he  had  done,  as  well 
as  confidence  in  what  he  would  be  able  to  do. 
Nor  was  Milton  in  the  ordinary  sense,  or  per- 
haps in  any,  a  humble  man.  Of  that  false 
kind  of  humility,  too  often  recommended 
from  the  pulpit,  which  consists  in  a  beautiful 
woman  trying  to  suppose  herself  plain,  or  an 
able  man  trying  to  be  unaware  of  his  ability, 
no  man  ever  had  less  than  Milton.  Neither 
from  himself  nor  from  others  did  be  ever  con- 
ceal the  fact  that  he  was  a  man  of  genius. 
In  his  eyes  no  kind  of  untruth,  however 
specious,  could  be  a  virtue.  But  of  a  finer 
humility,  built  on  truth,  he  was  not  without 
his  share.  The  truly  humble  man  may  be  a 
genius  and  may  know  it  and  may  never  affect 
to  deny  it :  he  may  know  that  he  has  done 
great  things,  far  greater  than  have  been  done 
by  the  men  he  sees  around  him  :  but  he  is 
not  judging  himself  by  the  standard  of  other 
men  :  he  has  another  standard,  that  of  "  the 
perfect  witness  of  all-judging  Jove,"  that  of 
"  as  ever  in  my  great  Taskmaster's  eye,"  and 
of  that  he  knows  how  very  far  he  has  fallen 
short.  Of  this  nobler  humility  Milton  had 
something  all  his  life  and  in  his  youth  much. 
It  is  this  which  reconciles  the  apparent  in- 
consistency between   his   many   proud   con- 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  93 

fessions  that  he  knows  himself  to  be  a  man 
called  to  do  great  things  and  his  reluctance 
to  let  the  world  see  what  he  had  already  done  : 
between  his  keeping  V Allegro  and  II  Tense- 
roso  ten  years  unpublished  and  his  preserving 
and  ultimately  publishing  almost  everything 
he  had  ever  written,  even  to  scraps  of  boyish 
and  undergraduate  verse.  From  one  point  of 
view  his  best  was  nothing  :  from  the  other, 
more  than  equally  true,  the  humblest  line 
that  had  come  from  his  pen  had  received  a 
passport  to  immortality. 

What  does  the  famous  volume  contain? 
It  opens  with  the  noble  Ode  on  the  Nativity, 
as  if  to  give  the  discerning  reader  invincible 
proof  in  the  first  twenty  lines  put  before  him 
that  the  proud  words  of  the  publisher's  preface 
were  amply  justified.  "  Let  the  event  guide 
itself  which  way  it  will,  I  shall  deserve  of  the 
age  by  bringing  into  the  light  as  true  a  birth 
as  the  Muses  have  brought  forth  since  our 
famous  Spenser  wrote ;  whose  poems  in  these 
English  ones  are  as  rarely  imitated  as  sweetly 
excelled.  Reader,  if  thou  art  eagle-eyed  to 
censure  their  worth,  I  am  not  fearful  to  expose 
them  to  thy  exactest  perusal."  So  the  preface 
ends  :  and  then  what  follows  is — 

"  This  is  the  month,  and  this  the  happy  morn, 
Wherein  the  Son  of  Heaven's  Eternal  King, 


94  MILTON 

Of  wedded  maid  and  virgin  mother  born, 
Our  great  redemption  from  above  did  bring ; 
For  so  the  holy  sages  once  did  sing, 

That  he  our  deadly  forfeit  should  release, 
And  with  his  Father  work  us  a  perpetual 
peace." 

Magnus  ab  integro  saeclorum  nascitur  ordo. 
No  one  had  ever  written  such  English  verse 
as  this  before  :  no  one  ever  would  again. 
Here  was  a  poet,  writing  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one,  for  whom  it  was  evident  that  no  theme 
could  be  so  high  that  he  could  not  find  it  fit 
utterance.  Fit  and  also  peculiar  to  himself. 
The  peculiar  Miltonic  note  which  none  of  his 
innumerable  imitators  have  ever  caught  for 
more  than  a  few  lines,  which  he  himself  never 
in  all  his  works  loses  for  more  than  a  moment, 
is  instantly  struck.  As  Mr.  Mackail  has  said, 
"  there  is  not  a  square  inch  of  his  poetry  from 
first  to  last  of  which  one  could  not  confidently 
say,  '  This  is  Milton  and  no  one  else.'  "  One 
may  even  go  further  than  Mr.  Mackail.  For 
he  seems  to  make  an  exception  where  cer- 
tainly none  is  needed.  He  is  justly  insisting 
that  one  of  the  most  remarkable  things  about 
Milton  is  that,  while  English  poetry  spoke 
one  language  in  his  youth  and  another  in  his 
age,  he  himself  spoke  neither.  His  "  accent 
and  speech  "  alike  in  Lycidas  and  in  Paradise 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  95 

Lost  are  his  own,  and  in  marked  contrast  to 
those  of  contemporary  poets.  But  here  Mr. 
Mac  kail  adds  the  qualification  "  if  we  exclude 
a  few  slight  juvenile  pieces  of  his  boyhood 
and  those  metrical  versions  of  the  Psalms  in 
which  he  elected  not  to  be  a  poet."  He 
asserts,  that  is,  that  neither  in  the  Psalms 
nor  in  the  "  juvenile  pieces "  is  Milton 
characteristically  himself  and  that  in  the 
Psalms  he  is  not  a  poet  at  all.  And  no  one 
will  care  to  deny  that  many  of  the  versions 
of  the  Psalms  have  little  Milton  and  less 
poetry  in  them.  But  is  this  true  of  all? 
And  in  particular  is  it  true  of  the  paraphrase 
of  Psalm  cxxxvi.  which,  with  its  companion 
version  of  Psalm  cxiv.  is  the  most "  juvenile  " 
of  all?  A  boy  of  fifteen  has  not  usually 
much  power  of  "  electing  "  to  be  or  not  to  be 
a  poet.  But  it  can  only  be  inadvertence  on 
Mr.  Mackail's  part  that  would  deny  that  the 
boy  Milton  at  that  age,  though  not  a  great 
poet,  was  already  himself  and,  more  than 
that,  was  already  promising  what  he  was 
soon  to  perform.  Who,  looking  back  from 
the  Ode  and  Comus  and  Paradise  Lost,  does 
not  hear  some  preluding  of  the  authentic 
strain  of  Milton  in 

"  Who  by  his  all-commanding  might 
Did  fill  the  new-made  world  with  light  "  ? 


96  MILTON 

Is  it  fanciful  to  note  that  we  have  here,  no 
doubt  in  their  barest  primitive  form,  two  of 
Milton's  life-long  themes?  The  Authorized 
Version  speaks  of  "  him  that  made  great 
lights  "  :  how  Miltonically  transformed  those 
words  already  are  in  the  two  quoted  lines  ! 
De  Quincey  said  that  Milton  was  "  not  an 
author  amongst  authors,  not  a  poet  amongst 
poets,  but  a  power  amongst  powers."  How- 
ever that  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  he,  so 
occupied  all  his  life  with  thinking  and  writing 
about  God,  thought  of  God  habitually  as  a 
power.  For  him  God  is  Creator,  Sovereign, 
Judge,  much  more  often  than  Father :  we 
hear  from  Milton  more  of  his  might  than  of 
his  love.  So  at  once  here,  at  the  age  of 
fifteen,  he  inserts  into  the  Psalm  he  is  para- 
phrasing that  characteristic  phrase,  so  splen- 
did and  potent  itself,  so  gladly  speaking  of 
potency  and  splendour, 

0 

"  Who  by  his  all -commanding  might." 

And,  if  power  be  one  of  the  most  frequent 
elements  in  the  Miltonic  thought,  what  is  more 
frequent  than  light  in  the  Miltonic  vision  ?  And 
is  not  that  substitution  of  "  did  fill  the  new- 
made  world  with  light "  for  the  bare  scientific 
statement  of  the  original,  a  foretaste  of  the 
Milton  who,  all  his  life,  blind  or  seeing,  felt 


THE   EARLIER  POEMS  97 

the  joy  and  wonder  of  light  as  no  other  man 
ever  did?  Do  we  not  rightly  hear  in  it 
a  note  that  will  soon  be  enriched  into 
the  "  Light  unsufferable "  of  the  Ode,  the 
"  endless  morn  of  Light "  of  the  Solemn  Music, 
the  "  bosom  bright  of  blazing  Majesty  and 
Light "  of  the  Epitaph  on  Lady  Winchester, 
and,  not  to  multiply  quotations,  of  the  "  Hail, 
holy  Light "  which  opens  the  great  invocation 
of  the  third  book  of  Paradise  Lost  ? 

It  may  be  as  well,  before  discussing  the  Od* 
and  the  other  contents  of  the  volume  issued 
in  1645,  to  mention  another  poem  which  is  of 
earlier  date  than  the  Ode,  though  it  was  not 
printed  till  1673 :  the  beautiful  Spenserian 
lines  On  the  Death  of  a  Fair  Infant.  They 
afford  the  most  real  of  the  exceptions  to  the 
rule  that  Milton  is  always  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  unmistakably  and  solely  himself. 
In  this  poem  he  shows  himself  at  the  age  of 
seventeen  so  soaked  in  Spenser  and  Spenser's 
school  that,  when  his  baby  niece  dies  and  he 
sets  himself  to  make  her  an  elegy,  what  he 
gives  us  is  these  graceful  verses  conveying  as 
much  as  a  boy  of  seventeen  can  catch  of  the 
lovely  elegiac  note  of  Spenser. 

"  O  noble  Spirit :   live  there  ever  blessed 
The  world's  late  wonder,  and  the  heaven's 
new  joy ; 

D 


98  MILTON 

Live  ever  there,  and  leave  me  here  distressed 
With  mortal  cares  and  cumbrous  world's 
annoy." 

So  sings  Spenser  of  Sidney :  and,  though  Milton 
is  scarcely  yet  more  the  equal  of  Spenser  than 
his  baby  niece  was  of  Sidney,  it  is  a  beautiful 
echo  of  his  master  that  he  gives  us  in  his 

"  O  fairest  flower,  no  sooner  blown  but  blasted, 
Soft  silken  primrose  fading  timelessly," 

and  in 

"  Yet  can  I  not  persuade  me  thou  art  dead, 
Or  that  thy  corse  corrupts  in  earth's  dark 

womb, 
Or  that  thy  beauties  lie  in  wormy  bed, 
Hid  from  the  world  in  a  low  delved  tomb." 

The  poem  is  full  of  the  then  fashionable 
conceits,  which  appear  again  a  little  in  the 
Ode,  after  which  they  are  for  ever  put  aside  by 
Milton's  imaginative  severity  and  high  con- 
ception of  poetry  as  a  finer  sort  of  truth  than 
prose,  not  a  more  ingenious  kind  of  lying. 
Once,  and  perhaps  once  only,  one  hears  in  it 
the  voice  of  the  Milton  of  later  years — 

"  Thereby  to  set  the  hearts  of  men  on  fire 
To  scorn  the  sordid  world,  and  unto  Heaven 
aspire." 

But  with  the  Ode  the  age  of  imitation  is 
over  for  Milton  and  he  stands  forward  at  once 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  99 

as  himself.  The  soft  graces,  somewhat  lack- 
ing in  outline,  of  the  Fair  Infant,  are  forgotten 
in  the  sonorous  strength  of  the  Ode,  The  £' 
half-hesitating  whisper  has  become  a  strain 
of  mighty  music;  the  uncertain  hand  has 
gained  self-confidence  so  that  the  design  now 
shows  the  boldness  and  decision  of  a  master. 
At  once,  in  the  second  stanza,  he  is  away  to 
heaven,  with  a  curious  anticipation  of  what  was 
to  occupy  him  so  much  thirty  years  later — 

M  That  glorious  form,  that  light  unsufferable, 
And  that  far-beaming  blaze  of  majesty, 
Wherewith  he  wont  at  Heaven's  high  council- 
table 
To  sit  the  midst  of  Trinal  Unity, 
He  laid  aside ;  and,  here  with  us  to  be, 

Forsook  the  courts  of  everlasting  day, 
And  chose  with  us  a  darksome  house  of 
mortal  clay." 

Milton's  genius  was  universal,  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  word,  that  is,  living  in  or  occupied 
with  the  universe.  He  is  as  supramundane 
in  his  way  as  Shelley  in  his.  And  no  part  of 
the  universe  was  more  real  to  him  than  heaven, 
the  abode  of  God  and  angels  and  spirits,  the 
original  and  ultimate  home  of  his  beloved 
music  and  light.  It  is  noticeable  that  there 
is  hardly  a  single  poem  of  his  —  U  Allegro 
and  Samson  are  the  only  important  ones — in 


100  MILTON 

which  he  does  not  at  one  point  or  other  make 
his  escape  to  heaven.  In  most  of  them,  as 
all  through  this  Ode  and  the  Solemn  Music, 
in  the  conclusions  of  Lycidas  and  II  Penseroso, 
in  the  opening  of  Comus,  this  heavenly  flight 
provides  passages  of  exceptional  and  pecu- 
liarly Miltonic  beauty.  The  fact  is  that, 
though  little  of  a  mystic,  he  was  from  the 
first  entirely  of  that  temper,  intellectually 
descended  from  Plato,  morally  from  Stoicism 
and  Christianity  but  more  from  Stoicism, 
which  cannot  be  content  to  be  "  confined  and 
pestered  in  this  pinfold  here,"  disdains  the 
"  low-thoughted  cares  "  of  mere  bodily  and 
temporal  life,  and  habitually  aspires  to  live 
the  life  of  the  mind  and  the  spirit, 

"  Above  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot 
Which  men  call  Earth." 

So  here  at  once,  in  his  first  important  poem, 
what  in  other  hands  might  have  been  a  mere 
telling  of  the  old  human  and  earthly  story  of 
the  first  Christmas  night  becomes  in  Milton's 
a  vision  of  all  time  and  all  space,  with  heaven 
in  it,  and  the  stars,  and  the  music  of  the 
spheres,  and  the  great  timeless  scheme  of 
redemption  with  which  he  was  to  have  so 
much  to  do  later,  with  history,  too,  and  litera- 
ture, the  false  gods  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics  already 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  101 

anticipating  the  parts  they  were  to  play  in 
Paradise  Lost. 

And  note  one  other  thing.  Milton  is  only 
twenty-one,  but  he  is  already  an  incomparable 
artist.  The  stanza  had  been  so  far  the  usual 
form  for  lyrics,  and  he  adopts  it  here  for 
the  first  and  last  time.  But  if  he  accepts 
the  instrument  prescribed  by  tradition,  with 
what  a  master's  hand  this  wonderful  boy  of 
twenty-one  touches  it,  and  to  what  astonish- 
ing music  !  It  seems  that  the  stanza  itself  is 
his  own.  Every  one  has  felt  the  combination 
in  it,  as  he  manages  it,  of  the  romantic  move- 
ment and  suggestion  which  he  loved  and 
renounced  with  the  classical  strength  which 
is  the  chief  element  in  the  final  impression 
he  made  on  English  poetry.  As  yet  the 
romantic  quality  is  the  stronger,  and  even 
one  of  the  mighty  closing  Alexandrines  is 
dedicated  to  the  lovely  Elizabethan  fancy  of 
the  "  yellow  skirted  fayes  "  who 

"  Fly  after  the  night-steeds,  leaving  their 
moon -loved  maze." 

How  such  a  line  as  that,  or  still  more  plainly 
the  two  which  end  the  most  romantic  stanza  of 
all— 

"  No  nightly  trance,  or  breathed  spell, 
Inspires   the   pale-eyed   priest   from   the 
prophetic  cell  " 


102  MILTON 

found  a  rejoicing  echo  in  Keats  is  obvious. 
This,  of  course,  has  often  been  noticed.  But 
has  it  ever  been  remarked  that  there  are  also 
lines  in  the  poem  which  might  have  been 
written  by  another  nineteenth-century  poet 
of  equal  but  very  different  genius  ? 

"  The  winds,  with  wonder  whist, 
Smoothly  the  waters  kissed, 
Whispering  new  joys  to  the  mild  Ocean ;  " — 

should  we  be  surprised  to  come  upon  these 
elemental  loves  and  joys  heralding  a  new 
reign  of  justice  and  peace  in  the  Prometheus 
Unbound  ? 

But  neither  Keats  nor  Shelley,  who  both 
had  their  affinities  to  Milton,  had  it  in  him 
to  reach  the  concentrated  Miltonic  energy  of 
such  lines  as — 

"  The  wakeful  trump  of  doom  must  thunder 

through  the  deep," 
or — 

"  Than  his  bright  throne  or  burning  axletree 
could  bear." 

Almost  every  one  of  these  final  Alex- 
andrines, it  is  to  be  observed,  sums  up  the 
note  of  its  stanza  in  a  chord  of  majestic 
power.  They  are  the  most  Miltonic  lines 
in  the  poem ;    for  it  is  precisely  "  majesty  " 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  103 

which  is  the  unique  and  essential  Miltonic 
quality;  and  Dryden  in  the  famous  epigram 
ought  to  have  kept  it  for  him  and  not  given 
it  to  Virgil,  though  by  doing  so  he  would 
have  made  his  splendid  compliment  im- 
possible. 

Among  the  poems  that  followed  in  the 
1645  edition  were  the  Passion,  a  failure 
which  Milton  recognized  as  a  failure  and 
abandoned,  but  yet,  characteristically,  did 
not  refuse  to  publish;  the  Epitaph  on  the 
Marchioness  of  Winchester,  which,  still  youth- 
ful as  it  is  and  is  seen  to  be  by  the  frigid 
and  false  antithesis  of  Queen  and  Marchioness 
with  which  it  ends,  has  yet  very  beautiful 
lines — 

"  Gentle  Lady,  may  thy  grave 
Peace  and  quiet  ever  have  ! 
After  this  thy  travail  sore, 
Sweet  rest  seize  thee  evermore  " ; 

the  famous  lines  on  Shakspeare,  contributed 
anonymously  to  the  second  Folio;  and  the 
noble  outburst  of  heavenly  music  which 
begins — 

"  Blest  pair  of  Sirens,  pledges  of  Heaven's 

joy 

Sphere-born  harmonious  sisters,  Voice  and 
Verse." 


104  MILTON 

This  was  written  some  years  later;  and 
even  after  Paradise  Lost  it  may  rank  as  the 
most  daring  and  entirely  successful  of  Milton's 
long-sustained  wheelings  of  musical  flight. 
The  stanza  no  longer  provides  him  with  space 
enough :  and  here  his  whole  twenty-eight 
lines  are  one  continuous  strain,  with  no 
break  in  them  and  scarcely  any  pause,  in 
ten-syllabled  lines  of  boldly  varied  rhyme 
and  accent.  His  task  here  is  not  so  difficult 
as  it  was  to  be  in  Paradise  Lost,  for  he  has 
rhyme  to  provide  him  with  variety  and  he 
admits  two  verses  of  six  syllables  among  his 
twenty-eight;  but  already  he  is  completely 
master  of  the  possibilities  of  the  ten-syllable 
line,  and  can  make  it  yield  as  lavish  a  wealth 
of  variety  in  unity  as  was  later  on  to  make 
the  great  passages  of  Paradise  Lost  an  eternal 
amazement  to  lovers  and  practisers  of  the  art 
of  verse. 

"  Wed  your  divine  sounds,  and  mixed  power 
employ, 
Dead  things  with  inbreathed  sense  able  to 

pierce ; 
And  to  our  high-raised  phantasy  present 
That  undisturbed  song  of  pure  concent." 

They  are  all  the  same  line,  and  yet  how 
different.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  this 
is  the  same  metre  which  Waller  and  Dryden 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  105 

were  soon,   amid  universal  applause,  to  file 
down  into  the  smooth  monotony  of — 

"  Great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied, 
And  thin  partitions  do  their  bounds  divide ; 
Else  why  should  he,  with  wealth  and  honour 

blest, 
Refuse  his  age  the  needful  hours  of  rest  ?  " 

For  Dryden,  as  still  more  for  Pope  and 
the  school  of  Pope,  the  thing  to  accomplish, 
so  far  as  possible,  is  to  prevent  any  of  the 
natural  accents  falling  upon  the  third,  fifth 
or  other  odd  syllables ;  there  is,  for  instance, 
not  one  which  does  so  in  the  first  fifty  lines 
of  Absalom  and  Achitophel  or  of  the  Epistle 
to  Arbuthnot.  The  object  of  Milton,  on  the 
contrary,  is  to  vary  the  position  of  his  accents 
to  the  utmost  possible  extent  compatible 
with  the  preservation  of  the  verse.  In  these 
four  lines  his  first  accent  falls  on  the  first 
syllable  in  the  first  two,  probably  on  the 
fourth  in  the  third,  and  on  the  second  in  the 
last.  And  the  other  accents  are  similarly 
varied  in  place  and,  it  may  be  added,  in 
number.  In  Milton's  case  the  listener's  won- 
der is  at  the  number  and  intricacy  of  the 
variations  he  can  play  upon  the  theme  of  his 
verse;  in  Pope's  it  is  at  the  amazing  clever- 
ness with  which  it  can  be  exactly  repeated  in 

D2 


106  MILTON 

different  words.  Milton's  music,  too,  is  con- 
tinuous, not  broken  into  couplets  sharply 
divided  from  each  other.  His  verses  pass 
into  each  other  as  wave  melts  into  wave  on 
the  sea -shore;  there  is  a  constant  breaking 
on  the  beach,  but  which  will  break  and  which 
will  glide  imperceptibly  into  its  successor 
we  cannot  guess  though  we  sit  watching 
for  an  hour;  the  sameness  of  rise  and 
fall,  crash  and  silence,  is  unbroken,  yet  no 
one  wave  is  exactly  like  its  predecessor,  no 
two  successive  minutes  give  either  eye  or 
ear  exactly  the  same  experience.  So  with 
Milton's  verse;  even  the  ocean  of  Paradise 
Lost  has  few  or  no  waves  of  music  of  more 
varied  unity,  of  more  continuous  variety  than 
such  lines  as — 

"  As  once  we  did,  till  disproportioned  sin 
Jarred   against   Nature's   chime   and   with 

harsh  din 
Broke   the   fair   music   that   all   creatures 

made 
To  their  great  Lord,  whose  love  their  motion 

swayed 
In  perfect  diapason  whilst  they  stood 
In  first  obedience  and  their  state  of  good." 

The  chief  remaining  minor  poems  of  Milton 
are  the  Atlegro  and  Penseroso,  Comus,  Lycidas 
and  the  Sonnets.    The  two  first  are  written 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  107 

in  those  rhymed  eight-syllable  lines  which  he 
had  already  used  in  part  of  his  Song  on  May 
Morning.  Like  that  beautiful  little  poem, 
they  represent  him  in  his  simplest  mood,  the 
mood  of  the  quiet  years  at  Horton,  spent, 
more  than  any  other  part  of  his  life,  in  the 
open  air,  and  among  plain  folk  unlettered  and 
unpolitical.  It  is  natural  enough,  therefore, 
that  they  are  the  most  popular  as  they 
are  the  easiest  of  all  his  poems.  Their  two 
titles,  which  mean  The  Cheerful  Man  and 
The  Thoughtful  or  Meditative  Man,  point  to 
the  two  moods  from  which  they  regard  life. 
Both  moods  are,  of  course,  described  as 
they  might  actually  be  experienced  by  a 
highly  cultivated  and  serious  man  like  Milton 
himself.  The  gravity  is  the  gravity  of  a  man 
of  thought,  n©t  of  a  man  ©f  affairs;  the 
pleasures  are  those  of  a  scholar  and  a  poet, 
not  those  of  a  trifler,  a  sportsman,  or  a 
sensualist.  Like  all  Milton's  works  they 
borrow  freely  from  earlier  poets,  remain 
entirely  original  and  Miltonic,  and  are  imi- 
tated only  at  the  peril  of  the  imitator.  Any 
one  who  looks  at  the  parallel  passages  in 
Marlowe  and  Fletcher  will  see  how  very  like 
they  are  and  how  very  little  the  likeness 
matters.  The  poems  stand  alone;  there  is 
nothing  of  quite  the  same  kind  in  English. 


108  MILTON 

The  least  unlike  pair  of  poems  is  perhaps  the 
two  Spring  Odes  of  the  present  Poet  Laureate, 
than  whom  no  one  has  owed  more  to  Milton 
or  repaid  the  debt  with  more  verse  which 
Milton  would  have  been  glad  to  inspire. 
But  Mr.  Bridges  has,  of  course,  avoided  any- 
thing approaching  a  direct  imitation ;  he  has 
merely  used  the  hint  of  two  contrasted  poems 
on  one  subject,  touching  inevitably,  as  Milton 
had  touched,  upon  some  of  the  opposite 
pleasures  of  town  and  country,  and  bringing 
Milton's  mood  of  cheerful  gravity  to  bear 
upon  them  both. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  in  detail  poems 
so  well  known.  But  a  few  words  may  be 
said.  Milton  was  never  again  to  be  so  genial 
as  he  is  here.  Never  again  does  he  place 
himself  so  sympathetically  close  to  the  daily 
tasks  and  pleasures  of  ordinary  unimportant 
men  and  women.  After  characteristically 
choosing  the  West  Wind  and  the  Dawn  as 
likelier  parents  of  true  mirth  than  any  god 
of  wine  or  sensual  pleasure,  he  will  go  on  for 
once  to  call  for  the  company  of — 

"  Sport  that  wrinkled  Care  derides, 
And  Laughter  holding  both  his  sides  " ; 

he  will  cast  a  pleased  eye  on  the  birds  and 
flowers  and  the  sunrise — the  latter  moving 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  109 

him  to  the  characteristic  magnificence  which 
in  this  poem  he  has  elsewhere  forgone ;  he 
will  recognize,  with  the  gratefulness  of  the 
tired  student,  the  careless  gladness  in  the 
voices  of  ploughman  and  milkmaid,  as  he 
passes  them  in  his  early  morning  walk.  Then 
he  will  give  a  glance  to  beauty  which  such  as 
they  cannot  see,  or  cannot  be  fully  conscious 
of  seeing — 

"  Mountains  on  whose  barren  breast 
The  labouring  clouds  do  often  rest  "  ; 

will  touch  on  the  romance  of  old  towers  and 
poetic  memories  of  which  they  have  only 
dimly  heard,  and  look  back  at  Thyrsis 
and  Corydon  and  all  the  pastoral  poetry 
which  such  scenes  recall  to  the  scholar's 
memory.  The  next  section  of  the  poem  is 
taken  from  a  different  world,  that  of  the 
merry  England  of  the  Middle  Age  with  its 
ale  and  dances  and  Faery  Mab ;  while  the  final 
one  carries  us  quite  away  from  the  rustics  to 
the  town  and  the  town's  pleasures,  pageantry 
and  drama  and  music — this  last,  as  always, 
moving  the  poet  to  peculiar  rapture,  and  an 
answering  music  of  verse — 

"  The  melting  voice  through  mazes  running, 
Untwisting  all  the  chains  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  harmony." 


110  MILTON 

II  Penseroso  is  the  praise  of  Melancholy  as 
L' Allegro  of  Mirth.  But  Milton  was  not  a 
melancholy  man  in  our  sense  of  the  word. 
When  Keats  declares  that — 

"  in  the  very  temple  of  Delight 
Veiled  Melancholy  has  her  sovran  shrine," 

he  is  interpreting  a  mood  into  which  Milton 
could  not  even  in  imagination  enter,  that  of 
the  intellectual  sensualist  who  dreams  his  life 
away  and  cannot  act.  Milton  was  a  man 
of  action  and  character,  and  his  Melancholy, 
quite  unlike  this,  is  that  of  the  Spirit  in  his 
own  Comus,  who  "  began — 

"  Wrapt  in  a  pleasing  fit  of  melancholy, 
To  meditate  my  rural  minstrelsy.' ' 

He  hails  her  at  once  asa"  Goddess  sage  and 
holy  "  and  as  a  "  Nun  devout  and  pure  " ; 
and  it  is  evident  from  the  first  that  her 
sorrows,  so  far  as  she  is  sorrowful,  are  those 
of  aspiring  spirit,  not  those  of  self -indulging 
and  disappointed  flesh.  Her  life  of  quiet 
studies  and  pleasures  is  self -chosen;  there  is 
a  note  of  will  and  self-control  in  the  words 
in  which  the  poet  bids  her  call  about  her 
Peace  and  Quiet  and  Spare  Fast,  Retired 
Leisure  and  Contemplation  and  Silence ;  and 
the  descriptions  which  follow  of  his  walks 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  111 

and  studies  and  pleasures,  in  town  and 
country,  by  night  and  morning,  are  those 
of  a  man  who  has  deliberately  shaped  his 
life,  and  means  so  to  live  it  that  he  shall 
leave  it  without  regret  or  shame  and  with  the 
hope  of  passing  from  it  to  a  better. 

Nor  is  it  any  m©©d  f>f  aaere  »elan<sk©ly 
that  kas  given  us  in  this  poem  such  pleasant 
glimpses  of  his  walks  abroad  and  studies  at 
home  in  these  Horton  years.  He  pays  his 
tribute  to  Plato,  the  Greek  tragedians  and 
the  dramatists  of  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
England;  and  to  his  own  two  most  famous 
predecessors,  Chaucer  and  Spenser;  and  we 
think  of  the  scholarly  hours  spent  gravely 
and  quietly  but  far  from  unhappily.  More 
delightful  still,  with  more  beauty  and  more 
happiness  in  them,  are  the  poem's  well-known 
landscapes — 

"  the  wandering  moon, 
Riding  near  her  highest  noon, 
Like  one  that  had  been  led  astray 
Through  the  heaven's  wide  pathless  way." 

Perhaps  no  one  again,  till  Shelley  came,  felt 
the  vastness,  the  pathlessness,  of  the  heaven 
as  Milton  did.  Or,  to  come  to  earth  again, 
where  does  poetry  set  the  ear  more  instantly 
and    actively   at   the    work    of    imaginative 


112  MILTON 

creation  than  in  those  finely  suggestive  lines 
about  the  curfew — 

"  Over  some  wide- watered  shore,  • 
Swinging  slow  with  sullen  roar  "  ? 

And  what  of  that  woodland  solitude  at 
noon,  with  memories  in  it  of  so  many  poets 
of  Greece,  Rome,  Italy  and  England,  the 

"  shadows  brown,  that  Sylvan  loves, 
Of  pine,  or  monumental  oak, 
Where  the  rude  axe  with  heaved  stroke 
Was  never  heard  the  Nymphs  to  daunt 
Or  fright  them  from  their  hallowed  haunt," 

which  carries  us  on  to  perhaps  the  loveliest 
Jines  in  all  the  Paradise  Lost — 

"  In  shadier  bower, 
More  sacred  and  sequestered,  though  but 

feigned, 
Pan  or  Sylvanus  never  slept,  nor  nymph 
Nor  Faunus  haunted." 

There  is  in  the  two  passages  just  the  difference 
between  the  youth  and  maturity  of  genius; 
but  that  is  all.  So  II  Penseroso  passes  on  its 
delightful  way,  ending,  of  course,  in  music 
and  heaven. 

There,  too,  "  before  the  starry  threshold 
of  Jove's  court,"  the  next  of*  these  earlier 
works  of  Milton,  the  mask   Comus%  begins. 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  113 

It  strikes  its  high  note  at  once  in  what  an 
old  lover  of  literature  boldly  called  "  the 
finest  opening  of  any  theatrical  niece  ancient 
or  modern." 

"  Before  the  starry  threshold  of  Jove's  court 
My    mansion    is,    where    those    immortal 

shapes 
Of  bright  aerial  spirits  live  insphered 
In  regions  mild  of  calm  and  serene  air, 
Above  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot 
Which    men    call    Earth,    and,    with    low- 

thoughted  care, 
Confined  and  pestered  in  this  pinfold  here, 
Strive  to  keep  up  a  frail  and  feverish  being, 
Unmindful  of  the  crown  that  Virtue  gives, 
After    this    mortal    change,    to    her    true 

servants 
Amongst  the  enthroned    gods  on  sainted 

seats." 

That  looks  forward  to  Paradise  Lost,  not 
backward  to  the  masks  of  the  previous 
generation  of  poets.  The  "  loud  uplifted 
angel -trumpet "  is  sounded  in  it,  and  we 
know  that  we  have  travelled  a  long  way  from 
the  trivial,  superficial  and  often  coarse  enter- 
tainments which  would  have  been  the  models 
of  Comus  if  Milton  had  been  the  man  to 
accept  models  of  any  kind,  least  of  all  of 
such  a  kind.  Like  them  his  mask  was  an 
aristocratic  entertainment,  played  to  a  noble 


114  MILTON 

audience  by  the  scions  of  a  great  house. 
But  the  resemblance  scarcely  goes  further. 
The  older  masks  were  mainly  spectacles; 
magnificent  spectacles  indeed,  designed  some- 
times, as  one  may  see  in  the  Chats  worth 
Library,  by  such  artists  as  Inigo  Jones  and 
produced  at  immense  expense;  but  just  for 
that  reason  addressed  to  the  eye  much  more 
than  to  the  ear,  and  scarcely  at  all  to  the 
mind.  Even  when  written  by  such  a  man  as 
Ben  Jonson,  the  words,  except  in  the  lyrics, 
are  of  almost  no  importance.  The  business 
was  to  show  a  number  of  pretty  scenes,  and 
noble  ladies,  and  to  give  them  a  chance  of 
exhibiting  their  clothes,  and  their  voices. 
The  last  gave  Jonson  his  chance;  the  fine 
Horatian  workman  that  he  was  could  always 
produce  a  lyric  that  would  fit  any  situation 
and  give  some  dignity  to  any  trivial  person- 
age. But  the  taint  of  vanity  and  fashion, 
pomp  and  externality,  inevitably  clung  to 
the  whole  thing.  Too  many  personages  were 
introduced,  probably  because  in  such  plays 
there  were  always  a  great  many  applicants 
for  parts ;  and  the  inevitable  result  was  that 
in  a  short  piece  none  of  them  had  space  to 
develop  any  character  or  life.  But  Milton 
knew,  as  the  Greeks  knew  and  Shakspeare 
did  not  always,  that  in  the  few  hours  of  a 


THE   EARLIER  POEMS  115 

stage  performance  only  a  very  few  characters 
have  time  to  develop  themselves  in  such  a 
way  as  to  interest  and  convince  the  hearer's 
imagination,  and  that  if  there  are  many  they 
never  become  more  than  a  list  of  names.  So 
he,  who  could  not  touch  anything  without 
giving  it  character,  limits  his  personages  to 
four  or  five  that  they  may  at  least  be  human 
beings  and  not  mere  singers  of  songs  or 
allegorical  abstractions.  And,  like  some  of 
his  predecessors,  he  takes  an  ethical  theme, 
the  praise  and  power  of  Chastity.  Fletcher 
in  The  Faithful  Shepherdess  had  taken  the 
I  same;  as  Jonson  had  taken  the  praise  of 
Temperance,  which  is  also  partly  Milton's 
subject,  in  Pleasure  Reconciled  to  Virtue,  in 
which  a  grosser  Comus  is  one  of  the  char- 
acters. But  to  get  any  parallel  to  the  power 
of  conviction  with  which  Milton  handles  it 
one  has  to  go  behind  Jonson,  whose  mask  is 
an  entirely  superficial  performance,  and  even 
behind  Fletcher,  in  whose  Shepherdess  the 
many  beautiful  and  moving  touches  are  lost 
in  a  crowd  of  characters  and  a  wilderness  of 
artificial  intrigue;  one  has  to  go  back  to  the 
man  whom  Milton  once  called  his  "  original," 
to  the  author  of  the  Faerie  Queen.  No  one 
but  Spenser  could  have  anticipated  the  scene 
between  Comus  and  the  Lady,  where  indeed 


116  MILTON 

Milton,  like  Spenser  in  the  bower  of  Armsi^ 
has  lavished  such  wealth  upon  his  sinner  that 
he  has  hardly  been  able  to  give  a  due  over- 
balance to  his  saint.  Yet  she  is  no  lay  figure, 
and  one  is  not  surprised  that  Comus  should 
twice  show  his  consciousness  that  she  has 
within  her  some  holy,  some  more  than  mortal 
power.  Milton  has  given  her  a  song  of  such 
astonishing  music  that  one  wonders  whether 
the  composer  Lawes,  for  whom  the  whole  was 
written,  could  touch  it  without  injury — 

"  Sweet  Echo,  sweetest  Nymph,  that  liv'st 
unseen 
Within  thy  airy  shell 
By  slow  Meander's  margent  green, 
And  in  the  violet-embroidered  vale 
Where  the  love-lorn  nightingale 
Nightly   to   thee   her   sad   song   mourneth 

well; 
Canst  thou  not  tell  me  of  a  gentle  pair 
That  likest  thy  Narcissus  are  ? 

O,  if  thou  have 
Hid  them  in  some  flowery  cave, 
Tell  me  but  where, 
Sweet  Queen  of  Parley,  Daughter  of  the 

Sphere  1 
So  mayst  thou  be  translated  to  the  skies, 
And  give  resounding  grace  to  all  Heaven's 
harmonies." 


he  lyrics  were  the  chief  beauty  of  the  old 
asks,  but  the  best  of  them  sink  into  in- 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  117 

significance  before  such  a  masterpiece  of  art 
as  this .  Perhaps  nothing  in  a  modern  language 
comes  nearer  to  giving  the  peculiar  effect 
which  is  the  glory  of  Pindar.  Of  course  there 
is  in  it  more  of  the  fanciful,  and  more  of  the 
romantic,  than  there  was  in  Pindar;  and  its 
style  is  tenderer,  prettier  and  perhaps  alto- 
gether smaller  than  his.  But  the  elaborate 
and  intricate  perfection  of  its  art  and  language, 
the  way  in  which  the  intellect  in  it  serves  the 
imagination,  is  exactly  Pindar.  In  any  case  it 
is  certainly  one  of  the  most  entirely  beautiful 
of  English  lyrics.  One  listens  with  delight 
to  the  musician  working  out  his  intricately 
beautiful  theme ;  or  is  it  nearer  the  impression 
we  get  to  say  that  we  watch  the  skilful  dancer 
executing  his  elaborate  figure  ?  In  either  case 
we  await  with  sure  confidence  the  triumphant 
close.  The  final  couplet,  by  the  way,  and  par- 
ticularly the  great  Alexandrine,  is  a  curious 
anticipation  of  Dryden's  finest  manner.  But 
the  rest  is  a  music  Dryden's  ear  never  heard. 
No  wonder  Comus  cries — 

"  Can  any  mortal  mixture  of  earth's  mould 
Breathe  such  divine  enchanting  ravishment  ? 
Sure  something  holy  lodges  in  that  breast, 
And  with  these  raptures  moves  the  vocal 

air 
To  testify  his  hidden  residence. 


118  MILTON 

How  sweetly  did  they  float  upon  the  wings 
Of  silence,  through  the  empty- vaulted  night, 
At  every  fall  smoothing  the  raven  down 
Of  darkness  till  it  smiled  !  " 

The  last  lines  show  that  Milton  has  not  yet 
outgrown  the  Jacobean  taste  for  conceits.  So 
a  little  later  on  we  find  him  writing  that — 

"  Silence 
Was  took  ere  she  was  ware,  and  wished  she 

might 
Deny  her  nature,  and  be  never  more 
Still  to  be  so  displaced  " ; 

a  piece  of  intellectual  trickery  such  as  Shak- 
speare  too  often  played  with,  and  Donne 
laboured  at;  and  one  of  a  special  interest 
because  we  see  it  again  later  transformed  and 
purified  in  the  famous  passage  of  Paradise 
Lost,  in  which  "  Silence  was  pleased "  not 
only  with  the  stillness  of  evening,  but  also 
with  the  song  of  the  bird  whose  "amorous 
descant "  alone  interrupts  it.  Yet  even  that 
seemed  to  Warton,  the  best  of  Milton's  early 
critics,  a  conceit  unworthy  of  the  poet.  So 
difficult  it  is  for  "  rational  "  criticism  to  see 
the  distinction  between  an  intellectual  ex- 
travagance and  a  flight  of  the  imagination. 

There  are  other  things   in   Comus  beside 
conceits  which  recall  Shakspeare.     What  can 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  119 

be  more  exactly  in  his  freshest  youngest 
manner  than  such  a  line  as — 

m 
■ 

"  Love-darting  eyes   and    tresses  like   the 
morn  "  ? 

And  what  can  be  closer  to  the  note  of  the 
great  Histories  and  Tragedies  than  the  Elder 
Brother's  outburst  of  faith — 

"  If  this  fail, 
The  pillared  firmament  is  rottenness, 
And  earth's  base  built  on  stubble  "  ? 

I  see  no  reason  whatever  to  doubt,  in 
spite  of  what  has  lately  been  said  by  a 
modern  critic  and  poet,  that  these  speeches 
of  the  Brothers  and  the  Lady,  rather  than 
those  of  Comus,  represent  Milton's  own  con- 
ception of  life.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that 
Comus  was  one  of  several  masks  performed 
as  an  aristocratic  counterblast  to  the  attack 
of  Prynne  and  the  Puritans  on  all  stage 
performances.  But  that  only  strengthens  the 
proof  of  Milton's  own  leaning  to  a  grave  and 
temperate  mode  of  life.  Even  when  he  writes 
a  mask  he  will  insist  that  it  shall  be  a  thing 
of  noble  art  and  serious  moral.  He  was  no 
narrow-minded  fanatic  and  will  write  a  piece 
for  great  ladies  to  perform  when  asked  by  his 
accomplished  friend  Lawes  :  but  he  is  already 


120  MILTON 

the  man  who  was  later  to  denounce  "court 
amours,  Mix'd  dance  and  wanton  masque  " ; 
and  if  he  writes  a  mask  himself  it  will  be 
to  take  the  old  "  high-flown  commonplace  " 
of  the  magic  power  of  chastity  and  give  it  an 
entirely  new  seriousness  and  beauty.  The 
notion  of  Mr.  Newbolt  that  there  were  two 
Miltons,  one  before  and  the  other  after  the 
Civil  War,  and  that  the  one  was  "  sincerely 
engaged  on  the  side  of  liberal  manners " 
while  the  other  was  an  ill-tempered  enemy  of 
civilization  and  the  arts  of  life,  is  a  complete 
delusion.  The  "  Lady  of  Christ's  "  who  was 
unpopular  on  account  of  his  severe  chastity, 
was  already  a  strict  Puritan  of  the  only  sort 
he  ever  became ;  and  the  author  of  Paradise 
Lost,  as  all  the  evidence  shows,  was  no  morbid 
sectary  but  a  lover  of  learning  and  music  and 
society.  Of  course,  no  man  goes  unchanged 
through  a  great  struggle  such  as  that  to 
which  Milton  gave  twenty  years  of  life. 
There  is  a  development,  or  a  difference,  call 
it  what  you  will,  between  the  Dante  who 
wrote  the  Vita  Nuova  and  him  who  wrote 
the  Divina  Commedia.  That  could  not  but 
be;  a  body  that  had  gone  into  exile  and  a 
soul  that  had  visited  hell  must  leave  their 
traces  on  a  man.  But  the  essential  Dante 
remains  one  and  the  same  all  the  while.     And 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  121 

so  does  Milton.  Nothing  can  be  more  certain 
than  that  the  grave  boy  whose  gravity  im- 
pressed all  Cambridge,  and  had  taken  immortal 
shape  in  the  Nativity  Ode  and  the  sonnet  of 
the  "  great  Taskmaster's  eye  "  before  he  was 
much  past  twenty,  did  not  mean  to  hold  up  a 
drunken  sensualist  like  Comus  as  a  model  for 
youth.  He  was  not  an  ascetic,  then  or  later ; 
and  he  was  writing  a  dramatic  poem;  and, 
of  course,  had  no  difficulty  in  giving  Comus  a 
fine  speech  about  the  follies  of  total  abstinence 
which,  indeed,  he  loved  no  better  than  other 
monkeries.  The  Lady,  in  reply,  as  she  is 
dramatically  bound,  over-exalts  her  "  sage 
and  serious  doctrine  of  Virginity  "  as  Comus 
had  overstated  the  case  against  it ;  but  what 
she  praises  is  Temperance,  not  Abstinence. 
Her  virginity  is  that  of  a  free  maiden,  not  that 
of  a  vowed  nun,  and  there  is  nothing  in  it  to 
unfit  her  to  play  the  part  which,  when  Eve 
plays  it,  gives  Milton  occasion  for  his  well- 
known  apostrophe  to  true  love.  Nor  is  there 
any  inconsistency  between  his  denunciation 
of  "  wanton  masks  "  in  that  passage,  and  his 
being  the  author  of  Comus.  His  own  mask 
was  as  different  as  possible  from  those  others, 
the  common  sort,  in  which  he  saw  the  pur- 
veyors of  "  adulterous  lust,"  and  with  which, 
now  as  then,  he  would  have  nothing  whatever 


122  MILTON 

to  do.  His  "  Lady  M  alone,  even  without  her 
brothers,  makes  that  clear.  What  she  says 
may  not  be  so  poetically  attractive  as  the 
speech  of  Comus ;  but  it  has  just  the  note  of 
exaltation  which  is  heard  in  all  Milton's  great 
ethical  and  spiritual  outbursts,  and  plainly 
utters  the  other  and  stronger  side  of  his  con- 
victions. The  truth  is  that  from  the  very 
beginning  to  the  very  end  of  his  life  Milton 
had  all  the  intensity  of  Puritanism,  more 
than  all  its  angry  contempt  of  vice,  but 
nothing  whatever  of  its  uncivilized  narrow- 
mindedness.  A  large  part  of  the  peculiar 
interest  of  his  character  lies  in  the  fact  that 
he,  almost  alone  of  Englishmen,  managed  to 
unite  the  strength  of  the  Reformation  with  the 
breadth  of  the  Renaissance.  We  have  both 
in  the  lovely  verses  which  are  the  Epilogue 
of  Comus;   and  if  it  begins  with — 

"  the  gardens  fair 
Of  Hesperus,  and  his  daughters  three 
That  sing  about  the  golden  tree  : " 

and  the — 

"  Beds  of  hyacinth  and  roses 
Where  young  Adonis  oft  reposes, 
Waxing  well  of  his  deep  wound 
In  slumber  soft,  and  on  the  ground 
Sadly  sits  the  Assyrian  queen  " ; 


THE   EARLIER  POEMS  123 

it  ends  with  the  Stoic  Puritan  motto,  "  Love 
Virtue,  she  alone  is  free."  And  that  these 
last  six  lines  were  no  formal  compliment  to 
the  conventions  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
Milton  chose  the  final  couplet — 

"  if  Virtue  feeble  were 
Heaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her," 

as  the  motto  he  appended  to  his  signature  in 
the  album  of  an  Italian  Protestant  at  Geneva 
in  1639,  adding  the  significant  Latin  which 
claims  the  sentiment  as  utterly  his  own — 

"  Caelum,  non  animum,  muto  dum  trans  mare 
curro." 

These  words  we,  looking  back  on  his  whole 
life,  may  fitly  translate  :  "I  am  always  the 
same  John  Milton,  whether  in  Rome,  Geneva, 
or  London,  whether  I  write  Comus  or  Allegro 
or  Paradise  Lost"  For  never  were  unity  and 
continuity  of  personality  more  complete  than 
in  Milton. 

There  remains  Lycidas,  in  which  Milton  out- 
distances all  previous  English  elegy  almost  as 
easily  as  in  Comus  he  had  out-distanced  all 
the  earlier  masks.  It  stands  with  the  great 
passages  of  Paradise  Lost  as  the  most  con- 
summate blending  of  scholarship  and  poetry 
in    Milton    and    therefore    in    English.     All 


124  MILTON 

pastoral  poetry  is  in  it,  Theocritus  and 
Virgil,  Spenser  and  Sidney,  Drayton  and 
Drummond,  with  memories,  too,  of  Ovid 
and  Shakspeare  and  the  Bible;  and  yet  it 
is  pure  and  undiluted  Milton,  with  the  signet 
of  his  peculiar  mind  and  temper  stamped  on 
its  every  phrase.  It  was  his  contribution  to 
a  volume  of  verses  published  at  Cambridge 
in  1638  to  the  memory  of  Edward  King,  a 
younger  contemporary  of  his  at  Christ's  who 
was  drowned  off  the  Welsh  coast  in  August 
1637.  King  was  already  a  Fellow  of  his 
college,  and  one  of  the  most  promising  young 
clergymen  of  his  day.  Milton  had  liked  and 
respected  him,  no  doubt,  but  had  certainly 
not  been  so  intimate  with  him  as  with  young 
Charles  Diodati  who  died  almost  exactly  a 
year  later,  and  was  lamented  by  his  great 
friend  in  the  Epitaphium  Damonis  which  is 
the  finest  of  the  Latin  poems.  Those  who 
read  Latin  will  enjoy  its  close  parallelism 
with  Lycidas  and  its  touches  of  a  still  closer 
bond  of  affection,  as  that  in  which  the  poet 
contrasts  the  easy  friendships  of  birds  and 
animals,  soon  won,  soon  lost  and  soon  re- 
placed by  others,  with  their  hard  rareness 
among  men  who  scarcely  find  one  kindred 
spirit  in  a  thousand,  and  too  often  lose  that 
one  by  premature  fate  before  the  fruit  of 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  125 

friendship  has  had  time  to  ripen.  But  if 
the  death  of  Diodati  aroused  the  deeper 
sorrow  in  Milton,  that  of  King  produced 
unquestionably  the  greater  poem.  It  is  a 
common  mistake  to  think  that  to  write  a 
great  elegy  a  man  must  have  suffered  a  great 
sorrow.  That  is  not  the  case.  Shelley  wrote 
Adonais  about  Keats  whom  he  knew  very 
little ;  Spenser  Daphnaida  about  a  lady  whom 
he  did  not  know  at  all.  It  is  not  the  actual 
experience  of  sorrow  that  the  elegiac  poet 
needs;  but  the  power  of  heart  and  imagina- 
tion to  conceive  it  and  the  power  of  language 
to  give  it  fit  expression.  Moreover,  the  poet's 
real  subject  is  not  the  death  of  Keats  or  King 
or  Mrs.  Gorges  :  it  is  the  death  of  all  who 
have  been  or  will  be  loved  in  all  the  world, 
and  the  sorrow  of  all  the  survivors,  the  tragic 
destiny  of  youth  and  hope  and  fame,  the 
doom  of  frailty  and  transience  which  has 
been  eternally  pronounced  on  so  many  of 
the  fairest  gifts  of  Nature  and  all  the  noblest 
works  of  man. 

About  Lycidas  criticism  has  less  to  say 
than  to  unsay.  Johnson's  notorious  attack 
upon  it  is  only  the  extremest  instance  of 
the  futility  of  applying  to  poetry  the  tests 
of  prose  and  of  the  general  incapacity  of 
that  generation  to  apply  any  other.     Even 


126  MILTON 

Warton,  who  really  loved  these  early  poems 
of  Milton  and  did  so  much  to  recall  them  to 
public  notice,  could  speak  of  him  as  appearing 
to  have  had  "  a  very  bad  ear  "  !     At  such  a 
time    it    was    inevitable    that    the    artificial 
absurdity  of  pastoral  poetry  which  is  a  prose 
fact  should  blind  all  but  the  finest  judges  to 
the  poetic  fact  that  living  spirit  can  animate 
every  form  it  finds  prepared  for  its  indwelling. 
Johnson  and  the  rest  were  right  in  perceiving 
that  pastoral  elegy  had  very  commonly  been 
an    insincere    affectation,    a    mere    exercise 
in   writing;    the  age  into  which  they  were 
born   denied  them  the   ear  that  could  hear 
the  amazing  music  of  Lycidas,  or  perceive 
the  sensuous,  imaginative,  spiritual  intensity 
which  drowns  its  incongruities  in  a  flood  of 
poetic  life.     There  is  a  still  more  important 
truth  which  that  generation  could  not  see. 
Prose  aims  at  expressing  facts  directly,  and 
sometimes  succeeds.     That  is  what  Johnson 
liked,   and  practised  himself   with  masterly 
success.     But  when  he  and  his  asked  that 
poetry  should  do  the  same  they  were  asking 
that  she  should  deny  her  nature.     She  knows 
that  her  truth  can  only  be  expressed  or  sug- 
gested by  its  imaginative  equivalents.     It  is 
with  poetry  as  with  religion.     Religious  truth 
stated  directly  becomes  philosophy  or  science, 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  127 

conveying  other  elements  of  truth,  perhaps, 
but  failing  to  convey  the  element  which  is 
specifically  religious;  and  therefore  religion 
employs  parable,  ceremony,  sacrament,  mys- 
tery, to  express  what  scientifically  exact  prose 
cannot  express.  So  poetry  can  neither  deal 
directly  with  King's  death  or  Milton's  grief 
nor  be  content  with  a  subject  which  is  a 
mere  fact  in  time  and  space.  If  it  did,  the 
effect  produced  would  not  be  a  poetic  effect; 
the  experience  of  the  reader  would  not  be  a 
poetic  experience.  The  poet  must  transform 
or  transcend  the  facts  which  have  set  his 
powers  to  work;  he  must  escape  from  them 
or  rather  lift  them  up  with  him  new-created 
into  the  world  of  the  imagination ;  he  must 
impose  upon  them  a  new  form,  invented  or 
accepted  by  himself,  and  in  any  case  so  heated 
by  his  own  fire  of  poetry  that  it  can  fuse  and 
reshape  the  matter  submitted  to  it  into  that 
unity  of  beauty  which  is  a  work  of  art.  That 
is  what  Milton  does  in  Lycidas  by  the  help  of 
the  pastoral  fiction;  and  what  he  could  not 
have  done  without  it  or  some  imaginative 
substitute  for  it. 

The  truest  criticism  on  his  pastoralism  is 
really  that  that  mould  was  too  small  and 
fragile  to  hold  all  he  wanted  to  put  into  it. 
The   great   outburst   of   St.    Peter,   with   its  i 


128  MILTON 

I  scarcely  disguised  assault  upon  the  Laudian 
clergy,  strains  it  almost  to  bursting.  Yet  no 
one  would  wish  it  away ;  for  it  adds  a  passage 
of  Miltonic  fire  to  what  but  for  Phoebus  and 
St.  Peter  would  be  too  plaintive  to  be  fully 
characteristic  of  Milton  whose  genius  lay 
rather  in  strength  than  in  tenderness.  Yet 
perhaps  we  love  Lycidas  all  tjbje  more  for 
giving  us  our  almost  solitary  glimpse  of  a 
Milton  in  whom  the  affections  are  more  than 
the  will,  and  sorrow  not  sublimated  into 
resolution.  Its  modesty,  too,  is  astonishing. 
He  had  already  written  the  Nativity  Ode, 
Comus  and  Allegro  and  Penseroso,  and  yet 
he  fancies  himself  still  unripe  for  poetry  and 
is  only  forced  by  the  "  bitter  constraint  "  of 
the  death  of  his  friend  to  pluck  the  berries  of 
his  laurel  which  seem  to  him  still  "  harsh  and 
crude  " ;  for  of  course  these  allusions  refer  to 
his  own  immaturity  and  not,  as  Todd  thought, 
to  that  of  his  dead  friend.  And  the  presence 
of  the  same  over-mastering  emotion  which 
compelled  him  to  begin  is  felt  throughout. 
There  is  no  poem  of  his  in  which  he  appears 
to  make  so  complete  a  surrender  to  the  chang- 
ing moods  of  passion.  The  verses  seem  to 
follow  his  heart  and  fancy  just  where  they 
choose  to  lead.  We  watch  him  as  he  thinks 
first  of  his  friend's  death  and  then  of  the 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  129 

duty  of  paying  some  poetic  tribute  to  him; 
and  so  of  his  own  death  and  of  some  other 
poet  of  the  future  who  may  write  of  it  and — 

"  bid  fair  peace  be  to  my  sable  shroud." 

How  natural  it  is  in  all  its  superficial  un- 
naturalness  !  The  walks  and  talks  and  verses 
made  together  at  Cambridge  so  inevitably 
leading  to  the  "  heavy  change  now  thou  art 
gone,  Now  thou  art  gone  and  never  must 
return";  and  the  fancy,  partly  but  not 
wholly  a  reminiscence  of  their  classical  studies, 
that  the  trees  and  flowers  which  they  had 
loved  together  must  now  be  sharing  the 
survivor's  grief;  the  reproach  to  Nature  and 
Nature's  divinities  following  on  the  thought 
of  Nature's  sympathy,  and  followed  by  the 
first  of  the  two  incomparable  returns  upon 
himself  which  are  among  the  chief  beauties  of 
the  poem — 

"  Ay  me  !     I  fondly  dream  ! 
'Had  ye  been  there,'  for  what  could  that 
have  done  ?  " 

And  so  to  the  vanity  of  earthly  fame  and 
the  thought  of  another  fame  which  is  not 
vanity.  Twice  he  seems  to  be  going  to 
escape  out  of  the  world  of  pastoral,  as  he 
strikes   his  own   trumpet  note  of  confident 


130  MILTON 

faith  and  stern  judgment ;  twice  the  unfailing 
instinct  of  art  calls  him  back  and  makes  a 
beauty  of  what  might  have  been  a  mere 
incongruity — 

"  Return,  Alpheus ;  the  dread  voice  is  past, 
That  shrunk  thy  streams  :    return,  Sicilian 

Muse, 
And  call  the  vales,  and  bid  them  hither  cast 
Their 'bells   and   flowerets   of   a   thousand 

hues." 

The  flowers  come,  in  their  amazing  beauty,  as 
poetry  knows  and  names  them,  not  altogether 
after  the  order  of  nature;  till  the  fine  flight 
is  once  more  recalled  to  earth  in  that  second 
return  to  the  sad  reality  of  things  which 
provides  the  most  beautiful,  and  as  the 
manuscript  shows,  one  of  the  most  carefully 
elaborated  passages  in  the  whole — 

"  Bid  amaranthus  all  his  beauty  shed, 
And  daffadillies  fill  their  cups  with  tears, 
To  strew  the  laureate  hearse  where  Lycid 

lies. 
For  so,  to  interpose  a  little  ease, 
Let    our    frail    thoughts    dally    with    false 

surmise. 
Ay  me  !  whilst  thee  the  shores  and  sounding 

seas 
Wash   far   away,   where'er   thy   bones   are 

hurled, 
Whether  beyond  the  stormy  Hebrides, 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  131 

Where  thou  perhaps  under  the  whelming 

tide 
Visit'st  the  bottom  of  the  monstrous  world." 

The  least  critical  reader,  when  he  is  told 
that  the  daffodil  and  amaranthus  lines  were 
once  in  the  reverse  order,  that  the  "  frail 
thoughts "  were  at  first  "  sad,"  and  the 
"  shores  "  "  floods,"  and  above  all  that  the 
"  whelming  tide  "  was  once  a  thing  so  in- 
significant as  the  "  humming  tide,"  can  judge 
for  himself  by  what  a  succession  of  inspira- 
tions a  work  of  consummate  art  is  produced. 

There  remain  the  sonnets,  whose  sufficient 
praise  is  given  in  an  immortal  line  of  Words- 
worth, while  all  that  a  fine  critic  had  thought 
or  learnt  about  them  is  contained  in  the 
scholarly  edition  of  Mark  Pattison.  Techni- 
cally they  are  remarkable,  like  everything  else 
of  Milton's,  at  once  for  their  conservatism 
and  their  originality ;  while  their  content  has 
all  his  characteristic  sincerity.  They  occupy 
a  most  important  place  in  the  history  of  the 
English  sonnet,  which  had  so  far  been  almost 
entirely  given  up  to  a  single  theme,  that  of 
the  poet's  unhappy  love,  which  had  com- 
monly little  existence  outside  his  verses.  The 
shadowy  mistresses  who  emulated  the  glories 
of  Beatrice  and  Laura  were  even  less  sub- 
stantial than  they;    and,  though  that  could 


132  MILTON 

not  hinder  great  poets  from  making  fine 
poetry  out  of  them,  it  was  fatal  to  the  ordinary 
sonnetteer,  and  gave  the  sonnet  a  tradition  of 
overblown  and  insincere  verbiage.  From  all 
this  Milton  emancipated  it  and,  as  Landor 
said,  "  gave  the  notes  to  glory."  To  glory 
and  to  other  things;  for  not  all  his  sonnets 
are  consecrated  to  glory.  They  deal  with 
various  subjects ;  but  each,  whether  its  topic 
be  his  blindness,  the  death  of  his  wife,  or  the 
fame  of  Fairfax  or  Cromwell,  is  the  product 
of  a  personal  experience  of  his  own.  No  one 
can  read  them  through  without  feeling  that 
he  gets  from  them  a  true  knowledge  of  the 
man.  At  their  weakest,  as  in  that  To  a  Lady, 
they  convey,  in  the  words  of  Mark  Pattison, 
"  the  sense  that  here  is  a  true  utterance 
of  a  great  soul."  The  rather  commonplace 
thought  and  language  somehow  do  not  prevent 
the  total  effect  from  being  impressive.  He 
entirely  fails  only  when  he  goes  below  the  level 
of  poetry  altogether  and  repeats  in  verse  the 
angry  scurrility  of  his  divorce  pamphlets. 
And  even  there  some  remnant  of  his  artist's 
sense  of  the  self-restraint  of  verse  preserves 
him  from  the  worst  degradations  of  his  prose. 
For  the  rest,  they  give  us  his  musical  and 
scholarly  tastes,  his  temperate  pleasures  and 
his  love  of  that  sort  of  company  which  Shelley 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  133 

Confessed  to  preferring,  "  such  society  as  is 
quiet,  wise  and  good  " ;  they  give  us  the  high 
ideal  with  which  he  became  a  poet,  the  high 
patriotism  that  drew  him  into  politics,  and 
that  sense,  both, for  himself  and  for  others, 
of  life  as  a  thing  to  be  lived  in  the  presence 
and  service  of  God  which  was  the  eternally 
true  part  of  his  religion.  The  four  finest  are 
those  on  the  Massacre  in  Piedmont,  On  his 
Blindness,  On  attaining  the  age  of  twenty- 
three,  and  that  addressed  to  Cromwell,  which 
perhaps  has  the  finest  touch  of  all  in  the 
pause  which  comes  with  such  tremendous 
effect  after  "  And  Worcester's  laureate 
wreath."  But  that  to  the  memory  of  his 
wife  and  "  Captain  or  Colonel  or  Knight  in 
Arms,"  the  one  addressed  to  Lawrence  and 
the  first  of  those  addressed  to  Skinner,  come 
very  near  the  best ;  and  the  whole  eight  would 
be  included  by  any  good  judge  in  a  collection 
of  the  fifty  best  English  sonnets,  to  which 
Milton  would  make  a  larger  contribution  than 
any  one  except,  perhaps,  Wordsworth  and 
Shakspeare. 

And  both  of  these  poets,  Shakspeare  always 
and  Wordsworth  often,  sinned  as  Milton  did 
not  against  the  true  genius  of  the  sonnet. 
No  doubt  they  had  nearly  all  precedent  with 
them,  and  their  successors  down  to  Rossetti 


\J 


134.  MILTON 

and  Meredith  have  followed  in  the  same  path. 
But  not  even  Shakspeare  and  Petrarch  can 
alter  the  fact  that  the  genius  of  the  sonnet 
is  solitary  and  self-contained.  A  series  of 
sonnets  is  an  artistic  contradiction  in  terms. 
There  may  be  magnificent  individual  sonnets 
in  it  which  can  stand  alone,  without  reference 
to  those  that  precede  or  follow;  and  so  far 
so  good;  but  on  the  bulk  of  the  series  there 
inevitably  rests  the  taint  of  incompleteness. 
They  do  not  explain  themselves.  They  are 
chapters  not  books,  parts  of  a  composition 
and  not  the  whole.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to 
doubt  that,  fine  as  they  may  be,  the  effect 
they  produce  is  not  that  of  the  finest  single 
sonnets,  beginning  and  ending  within  their 
own  limits.  Milton  may  never  have  been 
under  any  special  temptation  to  write  a  set 
of  consecutive  sonnets;  but  it  is  in  any  case 
like  his  habitual  submission  of  all  authority 
to  his  own  judgment  that  he  wrote  sonnets 
and  yet  defied  the  tradition  of  writing  them 
as  a  continuous  series,  as  he  had  also  disdained 
the  amorous  affectations  which  had  been  their 
established  subject.  But  in  this,  as  in  every- 
thing else  where  art  was  concerned,  he  was 
as  much  a  conservative  as  a  revolutionary. 
And  so  his  scholarly  interest  in  the  Italian 
sonnet,  and,  we  may  be  sure,  his  consummate 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  135 

critical  judgment,  made  him  set  aside  the 
various  sonnet  forms  adopted  by  Shakspeare, 
Spenser  and  other  famous  English  poets,  and 
follow  the  original  model  of  Petrarch  more 
strictly  than  it  had  been  followed  by  any 
English  poet  of  importance  before  him;  for 
the  Petrarchan  sonnets  of  Sidney,  Constable 
and  Drummond  all  end  with  the  unltalian 
concluding  couplet.  But  here  again  Milton's 
example  has  not  proved  decisive.  Words- 
worth did  not  always  follow  it,  though  he 
never  deserted  it  with  success.  Keats  began 
with  it  and  gave  it  up  for  the  Shakspearean 
model  with  the  concluding  couplet.  But  of 
him  again,  it  may  be  said  that,  while  he  only 
wrote  three  great  sonnets  and  two  of  them 
are  Shakspearean,  his  single  masterpiece  is 
Petrarchan  or  Miltonic.  Rossetti,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  no  Shakspearean  sonnets,  and 
his  finest  are  among  the  best  proofs  of  how 
much  a  sonnet  gains  in  unity  by  the  single 
pause  between  the  eight  lines  and  the  six 
instead  of  Shakspeare's  fourfold  division,  and 
especially  by  the  interlocking  of  the  rhymes  in 
the  second  half  of  the  sonnet  as  opposed  to 
Shakspeare's  isolated  and  half-epigrammatic 
final  couplet. 

There  can  be  little  doubt,  though  attempts 
have  been  made  to  deny  it,  that  nothing  but 


136  MILTON 

the  prestige  of  the  greatest  of  all  poetic 
names  has  prevented  the  superiority  of  the 
Petrarchan  model  from  being  universally 
recognized.  Shakspeare  could  do  anything. 
But  the  greatness  of  his  sonnets  is  due  not  to 
their  form  but  simply  to  their  being  his ;  and 
the  fact  that  he  could  triumph  over  the 
defects  of  that  form  ought  not  to  make  other 
people  fancy  that  these  defects  do  not  exist. 
They  do ;  and  but  for  the  courage  and  genius 
of  Milton  they  might  have  dominated  the 
history  of  the  English  sonnet  to  this  day. 
That  is  part  of  our  great  debt  to  Milton.  He 
could  not  give  the  sonnet  the  supple  and 
insinuating  sweetness  with  which  Shakspeare 
often  filled  it.  He  had  not  got  that  in  him, 
and  perhaps  it  would  scarcely  have  proved 
tolerable  except  as  part  of  a  sequence  in 
which  it  could  be  balanced  by  sterner  matter. 
Nor,  again,  could  he  give  it  Shakspeare's 
infinite  tenderness,  nor  his  sense  of  the  world's 
brooding  mystery.  But  he  could  and  did 
give  it  his  own  high  spirit  of  courage,  sincerity 
and  strength,  and  his  own  masterly  cunning 
of  craftsmanship.  And  no  just  reader  of  the 
greatest  sonnets  of  the  nineteenth  century 
forgets  Milton's  share  in  their  greatness.  Mr. 
Lascelles  Abercrombie  has  lately  remarked 
that  it  is  in  the  Prelude  and  Excursion  of 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  137 

Wordsworth  that  "  more  profoundly  than 
anywhere  out  of  Milton  himself  Milton's 
spiritual  legacy  is  employed."  The  same 
thing  may  be  as  truly  said  of  Wordsworth's 
sonnets.  If,  as  he  said,  in  Milton's  hands 
"  the  thing  became  a  trumpet,"  there  is  no 
doubt  that  it  remained  one  in  his  own.  He  is 
a  greater  master  of  the  sonnet  than  Milton; 
the  greatest  on  the  whole  that  England  has 
known.  He  used  it  far  more  freely  than 
Milton  and  for  more  varied  purposes.  Perhaps 
it  hardly  afforded  room  enough  for  one  the 
peculiar  note  of  whose  genius  was  vastness. 
It  is  seldom  possible  to  do  justice  to  a  quota- 
tion from  Paradise  Lost  without  giving  at  ^N 
least  twenty  lines.  The  sense,  and  especially 
the  musical  effect,  is  incomplete  with  less;  , 
for  a  Miltonic  period  is  a  series  of  intellectual  ( 
and  rhythmical  actions  and  reactions  which 
cannot  be  detached  from  each  other  without 
loss.  It  is  obvious  that  a  poet  whose  natural 
range  is  so  great  can  hardly  be  fully  himself  in 
the  sonnet.  But  Wordsworth  had  little  of  this 
spacious  freedom  of  poetic  energy ;  to  him — 

"  'twas  pastime  to  be  bound 
Within  the  sonnet's  scanty  plot  of  ground." 

And  so  he  could  use  it  for  everything;    for 
great  events  and  also  for  very  small;    not 

E2 


138  MILTON 

exhausting  great  or  small,  but  finding  in  each, 
whatever  it  might  be,  some  single  aspect  or 
quality  which  he  could  touch  to  new  power 
by  that  meditative  tenderness  of  his  to  which 
Milton  was,  to  his  great  loss,  an  entire 
stranger.  The  natural  mysticism,  for  instance, 
of  such  sonnets  as,  "  It  is  a  beauteous  evening, 
calm  and  free,"  or,  "  Earth  has  not  anything 
to  show  more  fair,"  is  quite  out  of  Milton's 
reach.  In  this  and  other  ways  Wordsworth 
could  do  much  more  with  the  sonnet  than 
Milton  could.  But  without  Milton  some  of  his 
very  greatest  things  would  scarcely  have  been 
attempted.  All  the  sonnets  that  utter  his 
magnanimous  patriotism,  his  dauntless  passion 
for  English  liberty,  his  burning  sympathy  with 
the  oppressed,  the  "  holy  glee  "  of  his  hatred 
of  tyranny,  are  of  the  right  lineage  of  Milton 
himself.     One  can  almost  hear  Milton  crying — 

"  It  is  not  to  be  thought  of  that  the  Flood 
Of  British  freedom,  which  to  the  open  sea 
Of  the  world's  praise  from  dark  antiquity 
Hath  flowed  '  with  pomp  of  waters  unwith- 

stood,' 
Roused  though  it  be  full  often  to  a  mood 
Which  spurns  the  checks  of  salutary  bands, 
That  this  most  famous  Stream  in  Bogs  and 

Sands 
Should  perish ;   and  to  evil  and  to  good 
Be  lost  for  ever." 


THE   EARLIER  POEMS  139 

There  and  in  the  "Two  Voices"  and  in  the 
"  Inland  within  a  Hollow  Vale  "  and  in  the 
Toussaint  POuverture  sonnet,  and  others,  we 
cannot  fail  to  catch  an  echo  of  the  poet  who 
first  "  gave  the  sonnet's  notes  to  glory."  No 
one  can  count  up  all  the  things  which  have 
united  in  the  making  of  any  poem,  but  among 
those  which  made  these  sonnets  possible  must 
certainly  be  reckoned  the  Fairfax  and  Crom- 
well sonnets,  and  above  all  the  still  more 
famous  one  on  the  Massacre  in  Piedmont. 
The  forces  which  animated  England  to  defy 
and  defeat  Napoleon  were  only  partly  moral ; 
but  so  far  as  they  were  that  they  found  perfect 
expression  through  only  one  voice,  that  of 
Wordsworth.  And  there  is  no  doubt  as  to 
where  he  caught  the  note  which  he  struck 
again  to  such  high  purpose.  He  has  told  us 
himself — 

"  Milton,  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour ; 
England  hath  need  of  thee." 

And,  what  seems  stranger,  he  has  now  had 
in  return  a  kind  of  reflected  influence  upon 
Milton.  The  total  experience  of  a  reader  of 
poetry  is  a  thing  of  many  actions  and  re- 
actions, co-operating  and  intermingling  with 
each  other.  And  as  we  can  hardly  read  Virgil 
or  the  Psalms  now  without  thinking  of  all 


140  MILTON 

that  has  come  of  them,  and  reading  some  of  it 
back  into  the  old  words  whose  first  creator 
could  not  foresee  all  that  would  be  found  in 
them,  so  it  is  with  Milton  and  Wordsworth. 
There  are  many  things  in  Milton  which  no 
Wordsworthian  can  now  read  exactly  as 
they  were  read  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
Wordsworth's  line 

"  Thy  Soul  was  like  a  Star  and  dwelt  apart " 

was  strangely  true  of  Milton  as  he  lived  in 
his  own  day.  But  it  is  less  true  now  that 
his  place  is  among  the  spiritual  company 
of  the  English  poets  and  that  Wordsworth 
stands  by  his  side,  or  sits  at  his  feet.  That 
does  not  detract  from  his  greatness.  Indeed, 
it  adds  to  it ;  for  it  is  only  the  greater  poets 
who  thus  transcend  their  own  day  and  cannot 
be  read  as  if  they  belonged  to  it  alone.  Read 
the  great  sonnet  on  the  Massacre — 

"  Avenge,   O  Lord,   thy  slaughtered   saints, 

whose  bones 
Lie  scattered  on  the  Alpine  mountains 

cold; 
Even  them  who  kept  thy  truth  so  pure 

of  old. 
When  all  our  fathers  worshiped  stocks 

and  stones, 


THE  EARLIER  POEMS  141 

Forget  not ;  in  thy  book  record  their  groans 
Who  were  thy  sheep,  and  in  their  ancient 

fold 
Slain   by  the    bloody   Piemontese,   that 

rolled 
Mother    with    infant    down    the    rocks. 

Their  moans 
The  vales  redoubled  to  the  hills,  and  they 
To  heaven.     Their  martyred  blood  and 

ashes  sow 
O'er  all  the  Italian  fields,  where  still  doth 

sway 
The  triple  Tyrant;    that  from  these  may 

grow 
A  hundredfold,  who,  having  learnt  thy 

way, 
Early  may  fly  the  Babylonian  woe." 

Is  there  not  more  in  it  than  the  Hebrew 
prophet  or  psalmist  and  the  English  Puritan  ? 
Is  there  not,  for  us  now,  something  beside 
the  past  of  which  Milton  had  read,  and  the 
present  which  he  knew  by  experience?  Is 
there  not  an  anticipation  of  another  struggle 
against  another  tyrant — nay,  the  creation  of 
the  very  spirit  in  which  that  struggle  was  to 
be  faced?  So  Milton  influences  Wordsworth 
and  the  England  of  Wordsworth's  day;  and 
they  in  their  turn  inevitably  influence  our 
minds  as  we  read  him.  There  lies  one  part  of 
the  secret  of  his  greatness;  a  part  which  is 
seen  at  its  highest  in  his  sonnets. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PARADISE    LOST 

Paradise  Lost  is  in  several  ways  one  of 
the  most  wonderful  of  the  works  of  man.  And 
not  least  in  the  circumstances  of  its  composi- 
tion. The  Restoration  found  Milton  blind, 
and  to  blindness  it  added  disappointment, 
defeat,  obscurity,  and  fear  of  the  public  or 
private  revenge  of  his  victorious  enemies. 
Yet  out  of  such  a  situation  as  this  the  most 
indomitable  will  that  ever  inhabited  the  soul 
of  a  poet  produced  three  great  poems,  every 
one  of  which  would  have  been  enough  to  give 
him  a  place  among  the  poets  who  belong  to 
the  whole  world. 

The  first  and  greatest  of  these  was,  of  course, 
Paradise  Lost  Unlike  many  great  poems, 
but  like  all  the  great  epics  of  the  world,  it 
i  obtained  recognition  at  once.  It  sold  well  for 
a  work  of  its  bulk  and  seriousness,  and  it 
received  the  highest  praise  from  those  whose 
word  was  and  deserved  to  be  law  in  questions 
of  literature.  Throughout  the  eighteenth 
142 


PARADISE  LOST  143 

century  its  fame  and  popularity  increased. 
Literary  people  read  it  because  Dryden  and 
Addison  and  all  the  established  authorities 
recommended  it  to  them,  and  also  because 
those  of  them  whose  turn  for  literature  was 
a  reality  found  that  these  recommendations 
were  confirmed  by  their  own  experience.  But 
the  poem  also  appealed  to  another  and  a 
larger  public.  To  the  serious  world  it  ap- 
peared to  be  a  religious  book  and  as  such 
enjoyed  the  great  advantage  of  being  thought 
fit  to  be  read  on  the  only  day  in  the  week  on 
which  many  people  were  accustomed  to  read 
at  all.  This  distinction  grew  in  importance 
with  the  progress  of  the  Wesleyan  revival  and 
with  it  grew  the  number  of  Milton's  admirers. 
When  Sunday  readers  were  tired  of  the  Bible 
they  were  apt  to  turn  to  Paradise  Lost.  How 
many  of  them  did  so  is  proved  by  the  influence  \ 
Milton  has  had  on  English  religious  beliefs.  J 
To  this  day  if  an  ordinary  man  is  asked  to  ' 
give  his  recollections  of  the  story  of  Adam  and 
Eve  he  is  sure  to  put  Milton  as  well  as  Genesis 
into  them.  For  instance,  the  Miltonic  Satan 
is  almost  sure  to  take  the  place  of  the  scrip- 
tural serpent.  The  influence  Milton  has  had 
is  unfortunately  also  seen  in  less  satisfactory 
ways.  He  claimed  to  justify  the  ways  of  God 
to  men.     Perhaps  he  did  so  to  his  own  mind 


144  MILTON 

which,  in  these  questions,  was  curiously 
matter-of-fact,  literal,  legal  and  unmystical. 
He  was  determined  to  explain  everything  and 
provide  for  all  contingencies  by  his  legal 
(instrument  of  the  government  of  the  world : 
'and  he  did  so  after  the  cold  fashion  of  a 
lawyer  defining  rights  on  each  side,  and  assum- 
ing that  the  stronger  party  will  exert  his 
strength.  So  far  as  his  genius  made  his 
readers  accept  his  views  of  the  relation  be- 
tween God  and  man  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
he  did  a  great  injury  to  English  religious 
thought.  Everybody  who  stops  to  reflect 
now  feels  that  the  attitude  of  his  God  to  the 
rebel  angels  and  to  man  is  hard  and  unfor- 
giving, below  the  standard  of  any  decent 
human  morality,  far  below  the  Christian 
oharity  of  St.  Paul.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
poem  when  it  deals  with  these  matters  is 
(often  suggestive  of  a  tyrant's  attorney- 
Weneral  whose  business  is  to  find  plausible 
excuses  for  an  arbitrary  despot.  Milton  had 
his  share  in  creating  that  bad  sort  of  fear  of 
God  which  is  always  appearing  as  the  thorn 
in  the  theological  rose-bed  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and,  later  on,  becomes  the  night- 
mare of  the  Evangelical  revival.  None  of 
these  conceptions,  the  capricious  despot,  the 
remorseless   creditor,    the    Judge   whose   in- 


PARADISE  LOST  145 

variable  sentence  is  hell  fire,  have  proved 
easy  to  get  rid  of :  and  part  of  their  perma- 
nence may  be  laid  to  the  account  of  Paradise 
Lost 

But  Milton,  who  is  like  the  Bible  in  so 
many  ways,  is  not  least  like  it  in  his  happy 
unconsciousness  of  his  own  immorality.  The 
writer  of  the  story  of  Samuel  and  Agag,  or 
that  of  Rebekah  and  Jacob,  was  perfectly 
unaware  that  he  was  immoral :  and  so  was 
Milton  in  Paradise  Lost :  and  so  also  and  for 
that  very  reason  were  the  majority  of  their 
readers.  Happily  most  of  us  when  we  read  a 
book  that  makes  for  righteousness  are  like 
children  reading  Shakspeare,  who  simply  do 
not  notice  the  things  that  make  their  elders 
nervous.  It  is  not  that  we  refuse  the  evil 
and  choose  the  good  :  we  are  quite  unaware 
of  the  presence  of  the  evil  at  all.  No  doubt 
that  sometimes  makes  its  influence  the  more 
powerful  because  unperceived  :  and  for  this 
kind  of  subtle  influence  both  Milton  and  the 
Old  Testament  have  to  answer.  But  with 
many  happy  natures  an  escape  is  made  by  the 
process  of  selection  :  and,  as  they  manage  to 
acquire  the  God-fearing  righteousness  of  the 
Old  Testament  without  its  ferocity,  so  they 
manage  to  receive  from  Milton  his  high 
emotional  consciousness  of  life  as  the  glad  and 


146  MILTON 

free  service  of  God  and  to  ignore  altogether 
his  intellectual  description  of  it  as  a  very  one- 
sided bargain  with  a  very  dangerous  Potentate. 

Nor  must  Milton  be  made,  as  he  often  is, 
to  bear  more  blame  in  this  matter  than  he 
deserves.  Divine  tyranny  with  hell  as  its 
sanction  was  no  invention  of  his.  The 
Catholic  Church,  as  all  her  art  shows,  had 
always  made  full  use  of  it.  And  the  new 
horror  of  his  own  day,  the  Calvinist  predestina- 
tion, he  expressly  and  frequently  repudiates. 
The  free  will  of  man  is  the  very  base  of  his 
system.  In  it  men  may  suffer,  as  it  seems  to 
us,  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  guilt ;  but  at 
least  they  suffer  only  for  deeds  done  of  their 
own  free  will. 

But  the  true  answer  to  the  charge  of 
corrupting  English  religious  thought  so  often 
broughtyagainst  Milton  is  that  while  the  harm 
he  did  must  be  admitted  it  was  far  outweighed 
by  the  good.  It  could  not  be  for  nothing  that 
generations  of  readers,  as  they  turned  over 
Milton's  pages,  found  themselves  listening  to 
the  voice  of  a  man  to  whom  God's  presence 
was  the  most  constant  of  realities,  the  most 
active  of  daily  and  hourly  influences  :  who, 
from  his  youth  up,  visibly  glowed  with  an 
ardent  desire  for  the  service  of  God  and  man  : 
who,  whatever  his  faults  were,  had  nothing 


PARADISE  LOST  147 

base  or  mean  about  him,  habitually  thought 
of  life  as  a  thing  to  be  lived  on  the  heights, 
and  by  his  exalted  spirit  and  unconquerable 
will  enlarges  for  those  who  know  him  the 
whole  conception  of  what  a  human  being  may 
achieve.  It  could  not  be  for  nothing  that  on 
the  topmost  heights  of  English  poetry  stood 
a  man  who  could  scarcely  finish  a  single  one 
of  his  poems  without  some  soaring  ascent 
to  heaven  and  heavenly  things :  whose  most 
characteristic  utterances  for  himself  are  such 
lines  as 

"  Toward  which  Time  leads  me,  and  the  will 
of  Heaven  " ; 

or — 

"  As  ever  in  my  great  Task-Master's  eye  :  " 

and  for  others  as  well  as  for  himself  such  a 
hope  as  that  which  concludes  his  At  a  Solemn 
Music — 

"  O,  may  we  soon  again  renew  that  song, 
And  keep  in  tune  with  Heaven,   till   God 

ere  long 
To  his  celestial  concert  us  unite, 
To  live  with  Him,  and  sing  in  endless  morn 

of  light !  " 

Tu  habe  Deum  prae  oculis  tuis,  says  the 
author  of  The  Imitation :  "  Have  thou  God 


148  MILTON 

before  Thine  eyes."  And  so  by  his  poetry 
and  by  his  life  says  Milton.  The  influence  of 
such  a  man,  whatever  the  faults  of  his  intellec- 
tual creed,  can  hardly  on  the  whole  have  been 
anything  but  a  good  one,  either  on  those  who 
heard  his  living  voice  or  on  those  who  for  two 
hundred  years  have  caught  what  they  may  of 
it  from  the  printed  pages  of  his  books. 

So  much  it  seemed  worth  while  to  say  in 
defence  of  Milton  whose  sins  in  these  matters 
have  always  been  exaggerated  by  his  ecclesias- 
tical and  political  opponents.  But  the  effect, 
good  or  bad,  which  a  great  poem  produces  on 
opinion  is  a  mere  by-product :  its  essential 
business  is  nothing  of  that  sort  but  the  pro- 
duction in  the  minds  of  competent  readers  of 
the  pleasure  proper  to  a  great  work  of  the 
imagination.  And  this  is  the  criterion  by 
which  the  Paradise  Lost,  like  every  other 
work  of  the  kind,  must  primarily  be  judged. 

The  poem,  as  we  have  it,  is  the  long  delayed 
result  of  an  intention  formed  in  Milton's 
strangely  ripe  and  resolute  youth.  Before 
he  was  thirty  he  spoke  openly  to  his  friends  of 
writing  a  great  poem  which  was,  as  he  shortly 
afterwards  had  no  hesitation  in  telling  the 
public,  to  be  of  the  sort  that  the  world  does  4 
not  willingly  let  die.  At  first  the  subject  was 
to  have  been  the  Arthurian   legend  which 


PARADISE  LOST  149 

poets  of  all  ages  have  found  so  fruitful.  But 
that  was  soon  abandoned,  apparently  for  the 
reason  that  a  little  examination  of  the  authori- 
ties convinced  the  poet  that  it  was  not  histori- 
cally true.  This  fact  has  a  literary  as  well  as 
a  biographical  importance.  Great  artist  as 
Milton  was,  he  seems  to  have  confused  truth 
of  art  with  truth  of  fact.  He  preferred  a' 
Biblical  subject  because  it  was  his  belief  that 
every  statement  in  the  Bible  was  literally 
true.  This  belief,  except  from  the  emotional 
fervour  it  inspired  in  him,  was  a  positive 
disadvantage  to  him  as  a  poet.  It  circum- 
scribed his  freedom  of  invention,  it  compelled 
him  to  argue  that  the  action  of  his  drama 
as  he  found  it  was  already  reasonable  and 
probable  instead  of  letting  his  imagination 
work  upon  it  and  make  it  so ;  it  made  him  aim 
too  often  at  producing  belief  instead  of  delight 
in  his  hearers.  This,  of  course,  had  obvious 
drawbacks  as  soon  as  people  ceased  to  regard 
the  first  chapters  of  Genesis  as  a  literal  prose 
record  of  events  which  actually  happened. 
For  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  many  people 
read  the  Paradise  Lost  and  supposed  them- 
selves  to  be  enjoying  the  poem  when  what  they 
were  really  enjoying  was  simply  the  pleasure 
of  reading  their  own  beliefs  expressed  in 
magnificent  verse.     In  the  same  way  many  ^ 


150  MILTON 

religious  people  imagine  that  they  enjoy  early 
Italian  art  when  they  in  fact  enjoy  nothing 
but  its  religious  sentiment.  But  neither  art 
nor  poetry  can  live  permanently  on  these 
extraneous  supports.  So  when  less  interest 
came  to  be  felt  in  Adam  and  Eve  there  were 
fewer  readers  for  Paradise  Lost.  But  the 
readers  who  were  lost  were  not  those  that 
matter.  For  it  is  a  complete  mistake  to  say, 
as  is  sometimes  said,  that  the  fact  that  the 
story  of  Paradise  Lost  was  once  believed  and 
now  is  so  no  longer  is  fatal  to  the  interest  of 
the  poem.  That  is  not  so  for  the  right  reader : 
or  at  least,  so  far  as  it  is  so,  it  is  Milton's 
fault  and  not  that  of  his  subject.  The  fflneid 
loses  no  more  by  our  disbelief  in  the  historical 
reality  of  iEneas  or  Dido  than  Othello  loses 
by  our  ignorance  whether  such  a  person  ever 
existed.  The  difficulty,  so  far  as  there  is  one, 
is  not  that  many  readers  disbelieve  the  story 
of  Milton's  poem :  it  is  that  he  himself 
passionately  believed  it.  If  he  had  been 
content  with  offering  us  his  poem  as  an 
imaginative  creation,  if  he  had  not  again 
and  again  insisted  on  its  historical  truth  and 
theological  importance,  no  changes  in  the 
views  of  his  readers,  no  merely  intellectual 
or  historical  criticism,  could  have  touched  him 
more  than  they  can  Virgil.     As  a  poet  he  is 


PARADISE  LOST  151 

perfectly  invulnerable  by  any  such  attacks  : 
it  is  only  so  far  as  he  deserted  poetry  for 
the  pseudo-scientific  matter-of-fact  world  of 
prose  that  he  fails  and  irritates  us.  All  the 
poetry  of  Paradise  Lost  is  as  true  to-day  as 
when  it  was  first  written  :  it  is  only  the 
science  and  logic  and  philosophy,  in  a  word 
the  prose,  which  has  proved  liable  to  decay. 
There  is  always  that  difference  between  the 
works  of  the  imagination  and  those  of 
the  intellect.  A  hundred  theories  about  the 
Greek  legends  of  the  Centaurs  or  the  Amazons 
may  establish  themselves,  have  a  vogue, 
undergo  criticism  and  finally  be  exploded 
as  absurdities  :  that  is  the  common  fate  of 
intellectual  products  after  they  have  done 
their  work.  But  the  Centaurs  of  the  Par- 
thenon and  the  Amazons  of  the  Mausoleum 
are  immortally  independent  of  all  changes  of 
opinion. 

This  is  the  first  disadvantage  of  the  subject 
chosen  by  Milton,  that  he  believed  in  it  too 
much.  The  fact  that  he  did  so  and  thought 
its  prose  truth  all-important  at  once  limited 
the  freedom  of  his  imagination  and  diverted  , 
him  from  the  single-minded  pursuit  of  the  ( 
proper  end  of  poetry.  He  was  evidently 
quite  unaware  of  this  drawback  and  it  has 
been  little,  if  at  all,  noticed  by  his  critics. 


152  MILTON 

On  the  other  hand,  he  was  perfectly  aware 
of  what  would  appear  to  other  people  to  be 
the  disadvantages  involved  in  the  choice  of 
a  subject  so  unlike  those  of  previous  epics.  He 
speaks  more  than  once  of  the  novelty  of  this 
theme,  the  best-known  allusion  being  the 
beautiful  introduction  to  Book  IX.,  in  which 
he  describes  his  subject,  that  of  the  human  sin 
and  the  divine  anger 

"  That  brought  into  this  World  a  world  of 
woe, 
Sin  and  her  shadow  Death,  and  Misery, 
Death's  harbinger  :  " 

and  contrasts  it  with  those  other  sins  and 
other  angers  on  which  Homer  and  Virgil 
built  their  poems.  But  he  is  not  afraid  of 
the  contrast :  he  thinks  it  is  all  to  his  own 
advantage — 

"  Sad  task  !  yet  argument 
Not  less  but  more  heroic  than  the  wrath 
Of  stern  Achilles  on  his  foe  pursued 
Thrice  fugitive  about  Troy  wall ;   or  rage 
Of  Turnus  for  Lavinia  disespoused ; 
Or  Neptune's  ire  or  Juno's,  that  so  long 
Perplexed  the  Greek,  and  Cytherea's  son  : 
If  answerable  style  I  can  obtain 
Of  my  celestial  Patroness  who  deigns 
Her  nightly  visitation  unimplored, 
And  dictates  to  me  slumbering,  or  inspires 
Easy  my  unpremeditated  verse, 


PARADISE  LOST  153 

Since  first  this  subject  for  heroic  song 
Pleased  me,   long  choosing  and  beginning 

late, 
Not  sedulous  by  nature  to  indite 
Wars,  hitherto  the  only  argument 
Heroic  deemed — " 

The  whole  passage  is  too  long  for  quotation. 
Indeed,  as  we  have  already  had  occasion  to 
notice,  it  is  one  of  the  difficulties  of  discussing 
Milton  that  quotation  is  almoste  always  com- 
pelled to  do  him  an  injury  by  giving  less  than 
the  whole  of  any  one  of  those  long-sustained 
flights  of  music  in  which  he  rises  and  falls, 
turns  to  the  left  hand  or  the  right,  as  his 
imagination  leads  him,  but  always  on  un- 
flagging wings  of  undoubted  and  easy  security. 
But  enough  has  been  quoted  here  to  illustrate 
the  poet's  direct  challenge  of  Homer  and  Virgil 
in  this  matter  of  subject.  He  was  perfectly 
well  aware  that  he  was  making  an  entirely 
new  departure,  not  only  from  the  subject  of 
the  ancients  but  also,  as  is  shown  by  his 
detailed  condemnation  of  "  tilting  furniture, 
emblazoned  shields  "  and  the  rest,  from  those 
of  such  poets  as  Ariosto,  Tasso  and  Spenser. 
He  did  it  deliberately,  with  open  eyes.  And 
there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  at  least  partly 
right.  To  this  day  he  and  Dante,  in  their 
different  ways,  enjoy  a  common  advantage 


154  MILTON 

over  Homer,  and  still  more  over  a  poet  mainly 
of  fancy  like  Tasso,  in  the  fact  that  their 
subject,  that  of  the  meaning  and  destiny  of 
human  life,  is  one  in  itself  of  profound  and 
absorbing  interest  to  all  thinking  men  and 
women.  Even  if  their  treatment  of  it  be  in 
some  parts  and  for  some  people  unsatisfying 
or  irritating  they  at  least  have  started  with 
that  advantage.  A  dangerous  advantage  be- 
cause, as  we  have  seen  in  Milton's  case  and 
might  also  see  in  Dante's,  tempting  them  to 
go  outside  the  pure  business  of  their  art; 
but  still  in  itself  an  advantage.  Milton  was 
probably  also  right  in  feeling  that  the  fighting 
element  in  the  old  poets  had  been  greatly 
overdone.  The  most  interesting  parts  of  the 
Iliad  for  us  to-day  are  not  battles,  but  such 
things  as  the  parting  of  Hector  and  Andro- 
mache and  the  scene  between  Priam  and 
Achilles.  Where  the  fighting  still  moves  us,  as 
in  the  case  of  Hector  and  Achilles,  or  Virgil's 
Turnus  and  Pallas,  it  is  mainly  for  the  sake 
of  an  accompanying  human  and  moral  interest 
altogether  above  its  own.  The  miscellaneous 
details  of  weapons  and  wounds  which  evidently 
once  gave  so  much  pleasure  are  now  equally 
tedious  to  us  whether  it  is  Homer  or  Malory 
or  Morris  who  narrates  them.  They  can  no 
longer  give  interest :   they  ^.an  only  receive  it 


PARADISE  LOST  155 

from  such  intrinsic  interest  as  may  belong  to 
the  combatants. 

So  far  Milton  had  some  justification  for 
preferring  his  own  subject  to  those  of  Homer 
and  Virgil.  But,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  he 
was  entirely  unconscious  of  its  disadvantages  : 
as  well  of  those  which  it  shares  with  the  Iliad 
and  Mneid  as  of  those  peculiar  to  itself.  Of 
the  former,  the  most  conspicuous  is  that 
inevitably  involved  in  the  introduction  of 
divine  persons  into  the  action.  Everybody 
feels  that  Homer's  gods  constantly  spoil  the 
interest  and  probability  of  his  story,  while 
very  rarely  enhancing  its  dignity.  One  never 
understands  why  they  can  do  so  much,  and 
yet  do  no  more,  to  affect  the  action.  Their 
interference  is  always  irritating,  generally 
immoral,  and  on  the  whole  ineffective.  Their 
omnipotence  is  occasional  and  irrational :  they 
are  limited  in  the  use  of  it  by  each  other, 
and  all  alike,  even  Zeus,  are  limited  by  a 
shadowy  Law  or  Fate  in  the  background. 
Their  interventions  only  make  the  struggle 
seem  unfair  or  unreal,  and  we  are  glad  to  be 
rid  of  them. 

Milton  is  still  more  deeply  involved  in  the 
same   difficulty.     All   his   personages   except \ 
two   are   superhuman.     It   is   his   great  dis- 
advantage as  compared  with  Dante  that  the 


156  MILTON 

main  lines  of  his  story  are  all  scriptural  and 
therefore  outside  the  influence  of  his  invention, 
that  his  actors  are  divine,  angelic,  or  sinless 
beings,  and  therefore  such  as  can  provide  little 
of  the  uncertainty  of  issue  or  variety  of  temper 
and  experience  which  are  the  stuff  of  drama. 
He  is  hampered  by  having  constantly  to 
assert  the  true  free  will  and  responsibility 
of  Satan  for  his  rebellion  and  of  Adam  for  his 
disobedience,  even  to  the  extent  of  putting 
argumentative  soliloquies  confessing  it  into 
their  own  mouths.  So  far  he  succeeds  :  both 
are*  felt  to  be  free  in  their  fatal  choice.  But 
the  war  in  heaven  can  arouse  no  interest 
because  its  issue  is  obviously  foregone,  and 
much  of  the  action  of  the  rebel  angels  neces- 
sarily conflicts  with  the  frequent  statements 
that  they  can  do  nothing  except  as  permitted 
by  their  Conqueror.  At  one  moment  they 
know  their  powerlessness,  at  another  they 
hope  for  revenge  and  victory.  These  are 
grave  difficulties  which  deprive  large  parts  of 
the  poem  of  that  illusion  of  probability  or 
truth  without  which  poetry  cannot  do  its 
proper  work.  A  further  difficulty,  from  which 
ancient  poets  were  free,  arises  from  the  purely 
intellectual  and  spiritual  nature  of  the  Chris- 
tian God.  It  is  as  if  Homer  had  had  to  deal 
with  the  divine  unity  of  Plato    instead    of 


PARADISE  LOST  157 

with  his  family  of  loving,  quarrelling,  fighting 
gods  and  goddesses.  A  being  who  is  Incom- 
prehensible as  well  as  Almighty  and  Omnis- 
cient can  hardly  be  an  actor  in  a  poem  written 
for  human  readers.  The  gods  in  the  Iliad 
shock  us  because  they  are  too  like  ourselves : 
Milton's  God  may  sometimes  shock  us  too: 
but  He  is  more  often  in  danger  of  fatiguing 
us  by  His  utter  remoteness  from  our  experience, 
by  His  dwelling  not  merely,  not  indeed  so 
often  as  we  could  wish,  in  clouds  and  darkness, 
but  in  a  world  of  theological  mysteries  which 
necessarily  lose  more  in  sublimity  than  they 
gain  in  clearness  by  being  perpetually  dis- 
cussed and  explained.  Dante's  poem  is  at 
least  as  full  as  Milton's  of  obscure  theological 
doctrines  and  attempts  at  their  explanation ; 
but,  either  by  virtue  of  the  plan  of  the  Divina 
Commedia  or  by  some  finer  instinct  of  reserve 
and  reverence  in  the  poet,  we  never  find  our- 
selves in  Dante  as  we  do  in  Milton  exercising 
our  critical  faculties,  whether  we  will  or  no,  on 
the  very  words  of  God  Himself.  If  we  reject 
an  argument  as  unconvincing  or  fallacious,  it 
is  on  Virgil  or  Statius,  Beatrice  or  Thomas 
Aquinas,  that  we  sit  in  judgment.  The  Divine 
Mind,  intensely  and  constantly  felt  as  its 
presence  is  from  the  first  canto  of  the  poem  to 
the  last,  is  yet  felt  always  as  from  behind  a 


158  MILTON 

curtain  which  can  never  be  raised  for  the  sight 
of  mortal  eyes. 

Still,  it  must  be  admitted  that,  impossible 
as  was  the  task  of  making  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal  an  actor  and  speaker  in  a  human  poem, 
Milton's  very  failure  in  it  is  sublime.  His 
prodigious  powers  are  nowhere  more  wonder- 
fully displayed  than  in  trying  to  do  what  no 
one,  not  even  himself,  could  do.  The  second 
half  of  his  third  book,  for  instance,  is  far 
more  interesting  than  the  first,  but  it  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  the  mere  fact  of  his 
accomplishing  the  first  at  all  is  not  a  greater 
proof  of  his  poetic  genius.  Nowhere  does 
I  that  unfailing  certainty  of  style,  in  which  he 
I  has  scarcely  an  equal  among  the  poets  of  the 
whole  world,  stand  him  in  such  astonishing 
stead  as  in  these  difficult  dialogues  in  heaven. 

"  Father,  thy  word  is  passed,  Man  shall  find 

grace ; 
And  shall  Grace  not  find  means,  that  finds 

her  way, 
The  speediest  of  thy  winged  messengers. 
To  visit  all  thy  creatures,  and  to  all 
Comes  unprevented,  unimplored,  unsought  ? 
Happy  for  Man,  so  coming ;  " 

I  On  the  side  of   invention    there  is  nothing 
'remarkable;    but,  on  the  side  of  art,  what  a 


PARADISE  LOST  159 

divine  graciousness  there  is  in  its  tone  and 
manner;  what  incomparable  skill  in  the 
management  of  the  verse !  Note  the  quiet 
monosyllabic  beginning,  taking  note,  as  it  were, 
of  the  decree  of  mercy,  and  then  the  expansion 
of  it,  the  loving  voice  pressing  forward  in 
freer  movement  as  it  confidently  proclaims 
the  happy  results  that  cannot  fail  to  follow. 
And  observe  the  peculiarly  Miltonic  inter- 
lacing of  the  whole,  line  leading  to  line  and 
word  to  word  :  the  "  grace  "  of  the  first  line 
giving  the  key  to  the  "  grace  "  of  the  second, 
the  repeated  "  find  "  of  the  second  line  and 
the  repeated  "  all "  of  the  fourth,  the  "  comes  " 
of  the  fifth  line  leading  on  to  the  "  coming  "  of 
the  sixth.  To  make  a  list  of  such  details  as 
these  is  not  to  explain  the  effect  which  they 
produce ;  that  is  the  secret  of  Milton's  genius. 
So  is  that  cunning  variety  in  the  rhythm  of\ 
the  verses  :  three  pauses  in  the  first  line,  two  \ 
in  the  second,  only  one  in  the  third :  the 
principal  pause  after  the  sixth  syllable  •  in 
both  the  first  two  lines,  and  yet  the  words  and 
their  accents  so  artfully  varied  that  not  the 
slightest  monotony  is  felt ;  the  suggestion  of 
easy  flight  in  the  smooth  unbroken  movement 
of  the  third  line — 

"  The  speediest  of  thy  winged  messengers." 


160  MILTON 

Milton  knew  that  an  utterance  of  this  kind, 
in  which  the  Bible  had  anticipated  him  a 
hundred  times,  admitted  of  no  novelty  in 
itself  :  and  his  reverence  forbade  him  to  give 
his  invention  free  rein  in  these  high  matters. 
But  what  he  could  do  he  did.  The  matter 
of  the  speech  he  leaves  as  he  found  it ;  what 
the  Son  says  every  reader  has  heard  before  : 
but  after  this  manner  he  has  not  heard  it. 
In  passing  through  Milton's  hands  all  has  been 
transformed  into  a  new  birth  by  the  con- 
summate craftsmanship  of  a  supreme  artist. 

Thus  the  poet  escapes,  as  far  as  it  was 
possible  to  escape,  from  the  difficulties  created 
for  him  by  his  acceptance  of  divine  Persons 
as  actors  in  his  drama.  But  the  escape  could 
only  be  partial.  It  is  true  that  as  Johnson 
says,  "  whatever  be  done  the  poet  is  always 
great  "  :  but  greatness  of  style  often  struggles 
in  vain  against  the  incongruity  of  a  verbose 
and  argumentative  Deity.  Such  gods  as 
Virgil's  Venus  and  Juno  may  hurl  rhetorical 
speeches  at  each  other  without  much  ill 
effect,  but  we  feel  that  it  was  a  lack  of  the 
$ense  of  mystery  in  Milton  that  kept  him 
£rom  realizing  that  the  one  God,  Creator, 
(Father  and  Judge  of  all,  cannot  with  fitness 
debate  or  argue  :  He  can  only  decree.  "  Let 
thy  words  be  few  " ;    that  is  even  truer,  we 


PARADISE  LOST  161 

instinctively  feel,  of  words  put  into  His  mouth 
than  of  words  addressed  to  Him.  Milton's 
God  suffers  even  more  than  Shakspeare's 
Ghosts  from  a  garrulity  which  destroys  the 
sense  of  the  awe  properly  belonging  to  a  super- 
natural being;  and  the  grim  laughter  of  the 
Miltonic  heaven  is  in  its  different  way  even 
more  fatal  to  that  awe  than  the  Jack-in-the- 
box  appearances  and  disappearances  of  the 
dead  Hamlet  and  Banquo. 

Such  are  some  of  the  difficulties,  in  part 
overcome  by  the  poet  and  in  part  unperceived, 
inherent  in  the  subject  of  Paradise  Lost  One 
more,  the  greatest  of  all,  remains.  Poetry 
is  a  human  art  and  its  subject  is  human  life. 
In  the  story  Milton  set  himself  to  tell  there 
are  only  two  human  figures;  and  how  can 
they,  living  as  they  do  in  isolated  perfection 
and  sinlessness,  without  children  or  friends, 
without  learning  or  art  or  business,  without 
hopes  or  fears  or  memories,  without  the  ex- 
perience of  disease  or  the  expectation  of  death, 
and  therefore  without  the  joy,  as  we  know  it, 
of  life  and  health,  how  can  they  provide 
material  for  a  poem  that  can  interest  beings  so 
utterly  unlike  them  as  ourselves  ?  The  answer 
is  twofold.  It  is  partly  that  they  do  fail  to 
provide  that  material.  The  Paradise  Lost 
has  in  fact  far  less  of  ordinary  human  life  in 

F 


162  MILTON 

it,  far  less  variety  of  action,  than  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey.  This  was  probably  unavoidable 
but  it  was  probably  also  Milton's  deliberate 
intention.  It  was  not  his  nature  to  care  much 
about  the  small  doings  of  ordinary  people  in 
everyday  life.  The  line  which  he  most  often 
repeats  in  Paradise  Lost  is  the  very  opposite 
of  those  which  are  repeated  so  often  in  the 
Iliad,  verses  of  no  noticeable  poetic  quality, 
just  doing  their  plain  duty  of  linking  two 
speeches  or  two  paragraphs  together :  such 
as — 

co£  ol  fjiEV  xoiavxa  tiqoq  aklr\kovz  ayogevov. 

What  Milton  chooses  for  repetition  is,  on  the 
other  hand,  one  of  his  stateliest  lines,  the 
magnificent — 

"  Thrones,  Dominations,  Princedoms,  Virtues, 
Powers." 

The  choice  is  characteristic  of  the  man.  His 
f"  natural  port,"  as  Johnson  well  said,  "  is 
igigantic  loftiness,"  and  his  end  to  "  raise  the 
^thoughts  above  sublunary  cares  or  pleasures." 
So  it  may  well  be  that  this  disadvantage 
of  his  subject  did  not  weigh  with  him  as 
much  as  it  would  have  done  with  most  poets. 
But  he  was  not  altogether  blind  to  it,  and 
the  amazing  skill  he  shows  in  partly  getting 
over  it  is  the  other  half  of  the  answer  to 


PARADISE  LOST  163 

the  question  asked  just  now.  His  action  up  ^ 
to  the  moment  of  the  Fall  is  the  inhuman 
one  of  a  few  days  in  hell,  heaven,  and  a 
small  sinless  spot  of  earth  :  and  the  Fall  does 
not  increase  the  number  of  actors.  Yet  into 
the  mouths  of  this  tiny  group  of  persons 
Milton  may  be  said  to  have  brought  all  the 
history  of  the  world  and  all  its  geography, 
art,  science  and  learning,  the  Jew,  the  Chris- 
tian and  the  Pagan,  Greek  philosophy  and 
Roman  politics,  classical  myth,  mediaeval . 
romance,  and  even  the  contemporary  life  of  J 
his  own  experience.  This  is  partly  done,  as' 
Virgil  had  done  it,  by  the  way  of  a  prophecy 
qMutureages  :  but  to  a  much  greater  extent 
by  the  way  of  similes  which  are  more  elaborate 
and  learned  in^Lilton  than  in  any  poet.  By  j 
their  assistance  he  gives  resjt  to  the  imagination  ( 
exhausted  by  the  sublimity  of  heaven  and  hell, 
bringing  it  home  to  its  own  familiar  earth, 
to  scenes  whose  charm,  unlike  that  of  Eden 
or  Pandemonium,  lies  not  in  the  wonder  their 
strangeness  excites  but  in  the  old  habits,  ex- 
periences and  memories  which  they  recall.  So, 
after  the  strain  of  the  great  debate  with  which 
the  second  book  opens,  he  soothes  us  with  the 
beautiful  simile  of  the  evening  after  storm — 

"  Thus  they  their  doubtful  consultations  dark 
Ended,  rejoicing  in  their  matchless  Chief;   ^ 


164  MILTON 

As,  when  from  mountain-tops  the  dusky 
clouds 

Ascending,  while  the  North-wind  sleeps, 
o'erspread 

Heaven's  cheerful  face,  the  louring  ele- 
ment 

Scowls  o'er  the  darkened  landskip  snow 
or  shower, 

If  chance  the  radiant  sun,  with  farewell 
sweet, 

Extend  his  evening  beam,  the  fields  revive, 

The  birds  their  notes  renew,  and  bleating 
herds 

Attest  their  joy,  that  hill  and  valley  rings." 

Note  how  large  and  general  it  is.  Its 
^method  is  the  classical  appeal  to  universal 
knowledge  and  feeling,  not  the  romantic 
method  of  strangeness  of  sentiment  and 
detailed  particularity  of  truth.  Matthew 
^Arnold  once  recommended  those  who  cannot 
[read  Greek  or  Latin  to  read  Milton  as  a  far 
better  key  than  any  translation  can  be  to  the 
Ssecret  of  the  greatness  of  the  ancient  poets. 
This  is  the  truth  :  and  not  only  for  the  reason 
on  which  Arnold  laid  just  stress — the  "  sure 
and  flawless  perfection  of  rhythm  and  diction  " 
in  which,  as  he  truly  says,  Milton  is  unique 
among  English  poets  :  but  also  for  his  classi- 
cal habit  of  mind,  for  his  central  sanity,  for 
the  sureness  with  which  he  makes  his  call  on 
the  thoughts  and   emotions,  not  of  eccentric 


PARADISE  LOST  165 

or  exceptional  individuals,  but  of  the  men  and 
women  of  all  times  and  all  nations. 

Yet  he  can  use  his  similes,  as  we  said,  to 
introduce  the  life  of  his  own  day  and  still 
generally  carry  his  classical  manner  with  him. 
So  in  the  following  simile  he  begins  with  the 
Homeric  wolf  and  ends  with  the  Roman  and 
Laudian  clergy.  Satan  has  leapt  over  the 
wall  of  Paradise  :  and  the  simile  begins — 

44  As  when  a  prowling  wolf, 
Whom  hunger  drives  to  seek  new  haunt  for 

prey, 
Watching  where  shepherds  pen  their  flocks  at 

eve 
In  hurdled  cotes  amid  the  field  secure, 
Leaps  o'er  the  fence  with  ease  into  the  fold  : 
Or  as  a  thief  bent  to  unhoard  the  cash 
Of  some  rich  burgher,  whose  substantial  doors, 
Cross-barred  and  bolted  fast,  fear  no  assault, 
In  at  the  window  climbs,  or  o'er  the  tiles  : 
So  clomb  this  first  grand  Thief  into  God's 

fold: 
So  since  into  his  Church  lewd  hirelings  climb." 

The  last  line  smacks  perhaps  more  of  the 
angry  pamphleteer  than  fits  with  classical 
sanity :  but  how  admirably  the  London 
citizen's  house  gives  vivid  reality  to  the  beau- 
tiful remoteness  of  the  wolf  which  English 
shepherds  had  long  forgotten  to  fear;  how 
the   recollection,    present   to   every   reader's 


/ 


166  MILTON 

mind,  of  that  very  same  simile  in  the  Gospel 
of  St.  John,  prepares  the  way  for  its  religious 
application  here  :  how  the  attention  is  seized 
by  that  magnificent  line  of  arresting  mono- 
syllables, each  heavy  with  the  sense  of  fate — 

"  So  clomb  this  first  grand  Thief  into  God's 
fold !  " 

It  used  to  be  said  that  Milton  uses  mono- 
syllables to  express  slowness  of  action.  But 
that  is  notably  not  the  case  here.  And  in 
the  main  it  seems  that  he  uses  them,  as 
.  Shakspeare  often  did,  for  expressing  the 
I  solemnity  of  grave  crisis,  or  for  deep  emotion, 
when  anything  fanciful,  ornate  or  verbose 
would  be  fatal  to  the  simplicity,  akin  to 
silence,  which  all  men  find  fitting  at  great 
moments.  So  Shakspeare  makes  Kent  say  at 
Lear's  death — 

"  Vex  not  his  ghost ;  O  let  him  pass  !  he  hates 

him 
That  would  upon  the  rack  of  this  tough 

world 
Stretch  him  out  longer." 

And  so  Milton  uses  these  tremendous  mono- 
syllables, like  a  bell  tolling  into  the  silence  of 
midnight,  to  force  our  attention  on  the  doom 
of  all  the  world  that  took  its  beginning  when 
Satan  entered  Paradise — 


PARADISE  LOST  167 

"  So  clomb  this  first  grand  Thief  into  God's 
fold." 

So  again,  with  less  solemnity  as  befitting  a 
less  awful  person  but  still  with  arresting  and 
delaying  emphasis,  he  records  the  actual 
eating  of  the  fatal  apple— 

"  she  plucked,  she  eat : 
Earth  felt  the  wound,  and  Nature  from  her 

seat, 
Sighing  through  all  her  works,  gave  signs  of 

woe. 
That  all  was  lost." 

So  he  suspends  the  flow  of  the  richest  and 
most  elaborate  of  his  similes  by  the  slow- 
moving  monosyllables  of 

"  which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain    \ 
To  seek  her  through  the  world  :  " 

So  he  strikes  the  deepest  note,  beyond  all 
politics,  of  his  debate  in  hell : 

"  And  that  must  end  us ;  that  must  be  our  ) 

cure —  . 

To  be  no  more  :  "  ' 

So  again  he  closes  the  first  Act  of  Paradise 
Regained  with  a  verse  of  solitary  awe — 

44  And  now  wild  beasts  come  forth  the  woods 
to  roam." 


168  MILTON 

But  to  return  to  the  similes.    Milton  uses 

them,  as  we  have  seen,  to  introduce  things 

f  familiar  and  contemporary  into  the  remote 

iand  majestic  theme  of  his  poem.     But  he 
also  uses  them  to  introduce  the  whole  world 
into  Eden,  all  later  history  into  the  beginning 
c  of  the  world,  all  the  varied  glories  of  art  and 
war,    poetry    and    legend,    with    which    his 
memory  was  stored,   into  an  action  which 
was   only    partly   human   and   provided   no 
\  scope  at  all  for  any  human  activities  except 
;of  the  most  primitive  order.     So  the  palace 
of  Hell  is,  he  tells  us,  something  far  beyond 
the    magnificence    of    "  Babylon,    or    great 
Alcairo  " ;    and  the  army  of  rebel  angels  far 
exceeds  those 

"  That  fought  at  Thebes  and  Ilium,  on  each 
side 
Mixed  with  auxiliar    gods;    and  what  re- 
sounds 
In  fable  or  romance  of  Uther's  son, 
Begirt  with  British  and  Armoric  knights ; 
And  all  who  since,  baptized  or  infidel, 
Jousted  in  Aspramont  or  Montalban, 
Damasco,  or  Marocco;  or  Trebisond, 
Or  whom  Biserta  sent  from  Afric  shore, 
When  Charlemain  with  all  his  peerage  fell 
By  Fontarabbia." 

So,  in  another  of  his  returns  to  those  tales 
and  fancies  of  the  Middle  Age  which,  in  spite 


PARADISE  LOST  169 

of  his  intellectual  and  moral  rejection  of  their 
falsity,  yet  always  moved  him  to  unusual 
beauty  of  verse,  he  compares  the  dwarfed 
rebels  of  Hell  to  the 

"  faery  elves, 
Whose  midnight  revels,  by  a  forest  side 
Or  fountain,  some  belated  peasant  sees, 
Or   dreams    he    sees,    while    overhead    the 

Moon 
Sits  arbitress,  and  nearer  to  the  Earth 
Wheels   her   pale   course;     they,   on  their 

mirth  and  dance 
Intent,  with  jocund  music  charm  his  ear ; 
At    once    with    joy    and    fear    his    heart 

rebounds." 

So  Eve  at  her  gardening  recalls  Pales,  or 
Pomona  or 

"  Ceres  in  her  prime, 
Yet  virgin  of  Proserpina  from  Jove." 

And  so,  in  an  earlier  book,  the  beauty  of 
Paradise  itself,  too  great  to  be  directly  told, 
is,  like  the  splendour  of  Pandemonium,  con- 
veyed to  us  by  the  most  perfect  of  those 
negative  similes  which,  forced  upon  Milton 
by  the  narrow  bounds  of  his  story,  are  perhaps 
the  most  distinctive  of  all  the  glories  of 
Paradise  Lost  It  is  too  long  to  quote  in  full : 
but  a  few  lines  may  be  given  :  and  they  must 
include  the  first  four,  one  of  which  has  just 


170  MILTON 

been  quoted,  verses  of  such  amazing  beauty 
that,  if  Milton  could  be  represented  by  four 
lines,  these  might  well  be  the  chosen  four — 

"  Not  that  fair  field 
Of  Enna,  where  Proserpin  gathering  flowers, 
Herself  a  fairer  flower,  by  gloomy  Dis 
Was  gathered,  which  cost  Ce*res  all  that  pain 
To  seek  her  through  the  world ;  nor  that  sweet 

grove 
Of  Daphne  by  Orontes,  and  the  inspired 
Castalian  spring,  might  with  this  Paradise 
Of  Eden  strive." 

But  it  is  time  to  leave  Milton's  similes, 
though  similes  play  a  more  important  part  in 
Paradise  Lost  than  in  any  other  epic.  In- 
deed their  necessary  absence  is  a  great  element 
in  the  comparative  dulness  of  the  books  given 
over  to  the  discourses  of  Raphael  and  Michael. 
A  single  chapter  in  a  little  book  of  this  kind 
can  only  deal  with  one  or  two  aspects  of  so 
great  a  subject  as  Paradise  Lost  That  being 
so,  it  is  best,  perhaps,  to  touch  on  points  in 
which  Milton  stands  pre-eminent  or  unique. 
The  similes  are  one  of  these.  Another  is  the 
splendour  of  the  Miltonic  speeches.  It  is  one 
of  the  defects  of  Paradise  Lost  that  its  actors 
are  seldom  soldiers  whom  all  the  ages  agree 
to  admire,  and  often  theologians  whom  all 
fear  or  dislike,  or  politicians  whom  all  obey 


PARADISE  LOST  171 

and  despise.  Yet  how  magnificently  Milton 
turns  this  weakness  into  a  strength  !  His 
speeches  have  not  the  eternal  humanity  of 
Homer's  :  but  as  oratory,  above  all  as  de- 
bating oratory,  they  have  no  poetic  rivals 
outside  the  drama.  The  poet  who  had  lived 
through  the  Long  Parliament  and  the  trial 
of  Strafford  knew  the  art  of  speech  as  Homer 
could  not  know  it.  It  may  seem  strange  to 
us  that  the  political  struggle  of  his  day 
affected  him  so  much  more  than  the  military ; 
but  the  fact  is  so.  Pym  and  Hampden  are 
felt  in  Paradise  Lost  far  more  than  Fairfax 
or  Cromwell.  The  speeches  of  the  second 
book  could  only  have  been  written  by  the 
citizen  of  a  free  state  who  had  lived  through 
a  crisis  in  its  fortunes.  Other  speeches  in 
the  poem — that  incomparable  one  of  Eve  to 
Adam  in  the  fourth  book,  "  Sweet  is  the 
breath  of  morn,"  those  that  pass  between 
Eve  and  Adam  after  the  Fall  and  Adam's 
Job-like  lament  in  the  tenth  book — have  a 
purer  human  beauty  about  them :  but  of 
the  oratory  of  debate  no  poem  in  the  world 
provides  a  more  magnificent  display  than  the 
second  book  of  Paradise  Lost  The  debate  is 
a  real  debate.  The  opening  of  Moloch,  "  My 
sentence  is  for  open  war,"  would  be  instantly 
effective  in  any  Parliament  in  the  world.     It 


172  MILTON 

rouses  attention  by  its  directness,  it  compels 
adherence  as  only  courage  can.  To  undo  its 
effect  Belial  has  to  employ  the  most  subtle 
of  all  oratorical  arts,  that  of  accepting  the 
arguments  which  he  dare  not  directly  combat 
and  then  gradually  turning  them  to  the  con- 
fusion of  their  author.  So  he  and  Mammon 
bring  the  assembly  completely  round  to  the 
mood  of  ease  and  acquiescence.  Then  follows 
the  tremendous  figure  of  Beelzebub,  an  aged 
Chatham  or  Gladstone,  who 

"  in  his  rising  seemed 
A  pillar  of  state.    Deep  on  his  front  engraven 
Deliberation  sat  and  public  care; 
And  princely  counsel  in  his  facelyet  shone, 
Majestic  though  in  ruin.     Sage  he  stood, 
With  Atlantean  shoulders  fit  to  bear 
The  weight  of  mightiest  monarchies ;  his  look 
Drew  audience  and  attention  still  as  night, 
Or  summer's  noon-tide  air." 

Yet  Milton's  consciousness  of  the  situation  as 
it  really  would  be  is  such  that  Beelzebub  does 
not  dare  to  revive  Moloch's  defeated  policy 
of  war.  To  talk  of  fighting  to  cowed  rebels 
who  have  just  been  taught  the  too  pleasant 
lesson  of  the  folly  of  further  resistance  would 
have  been  useless.  So  he  begins  by  telling 
them  that  the  ease  promised  to  them  is  a 
delusion :  they  may  submit,  but  submission 


PARADISE  LOST  173 

will  never  win  them  peace,  or  deliver  them 
from  their  victorious  enemy.  Peace,  then, 
they  cannot  have ;  and  must  have  war : 
but  it  need  not  be  open  or  dangerous :  craft 
has  its  weapons  as  well  as  force :  "  what  if 
we  find  Some  easier  enterprise "  than  the 
perilous  folly  of  assaulting  heaven? 

Such  a  sketch  may  just  serve  to  show  that 
the  great  debate  is  a  living  thing  in  which  we 
feel  the  temper  of  the  audience  submitting 
to  the  successive  orators  and  in  its  turn  re- 
acting upon  them.  Another  proof  of  the 
actuality  of  Milton's  oratory  is  the  way  in 
which  it  can  be  quoted. 

"  I  give  not  Heaven  for  lost : " 

"  Which,  if  not  victory,  is  yet  revenge : " 

"  What  though  the  field  be  lost? 
All  is  not  lost ;   the  unconquerable  will, 
And  study  of  revenge,  immortal  hate, 
And  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield, 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome :  " 

"  what  peace  can  we  return 
But,  to  our  power,  hostility  and  hate  ?  " 

"  This  would  surpass 
Common  revenge,  and  interrupt  his  joy 
In  our  confusion :  " 


174  MILTON 

"  Advise  if  this  be  worth 
Attempting,  or  to  sit  in  darkness  here 
Hatching  vain  empires :  " 

"  What  reinforcement  we  may  gain  from  hope, 
If  not,  what  resolution  from  despair :  " 

"  on  whom  we  send 
The  weight  of  all  and  our  last  hope  relies :  " 

"  This  enterprise 
None  shall  partake  with  me." 

All  these  have  been  or  could  well  be  hurled 
by  contending  Parliamentarians  across  the 
table  of  the  House  of  Commons,  often  with 
a  fine  irony,  the  Miltonic  magnificence  em- 
phasizing the  pettiness  of  the  ordinary  politi- 
cal squabbles.  But,  of  course,  the  theological 
questions  which  are  at  the  root  of  Milton's 
debate  make  many  of  the  arguments  inap- 
plicable to  politics  :  indeed,  what  is  probably 
the  most  remembered  passage  in  all  the 
speeches  has  nothing  to  do  with  social  or 
political  activities  but  draws  its  poignant 
interest  from  the  secret  thoughts  that  visit 
the  hearts  of  men  when  they  are  most  alone — 

"  And  that  must  end  us ;  that  must  be  our 

cure, 
To  be  no  more.     Sad  cure  !   for  who  would 

lose, 
Though  full  of  pain,  this  intellectual  being, 


PARADISE  LOST  175 

Those     thoughts     that     wander     through 

eternity, 
To  perish  rather,  swallowed  up  and  lost 
In  the  wide  womb  of  uncreated  Night, 
Devoid  of  sense  and  motion  ?  " 

Here  we  obviously  go  outside  the  dramatic 
probabilities  :  it  is  no  longer  Belial  who  is 
speaking  :  it  is  the  voice  of  a  highly  cultivated 
and  intellectual  human  being  with  all  Greek 
thought  behind  him;  it  is,  in  short,  Milton 
himself.  The  whole  poem  is  full  of  such 
autobiographical  confessional  passages,  either 
indirect  like  this  or  open  and  undisguised  like 
the  great  introductions  to  the  first,  third, 
seventh  and  ninth  books.  This  constant 
intervention  of  the  poet  in  his  epic  is  one  of 
the  originalities  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  certainly 
not  the  least  successful.  The  passages  which 
are  due  to  it  have  been  criticized  as  irregu- 
larities or  superfluities,  but,  as  Johnson 
justly  asked,  "  superfluities  so  beautiful  who 
would  take  away  ?  "  Homer  may  be  said 
never  to  allow  us  to  do  more  than  guess 
obscurely  at  what  he  himself  was  or 
thought  or  felt :  so  leaving  room  for  the 
follies  of  the  criticism  which  supposes  him  to 
be  a  kind  of  limited  company  of  poets.  Virgil 
spoke  directly  to  his  readers  at  least  once 
in  the  Mneid,  in  the  most  magnificent,  and 


176  MILTON 

most  magnificently  fulfilled,  of  all  the  poetic 
promises  of  eternal  fame — 

"  Fortunati   ambo !     Si   quid   mea   carmina 

possunt 
Nulla  diesunquam  memori  vos  eximet  sevo 
Dum    domus    JEnesd     Capitoli     immobile 

saxum 
Accolet  imperiumque  pater  Romanus  habe- 

bit." 

But  it  is  less  in  such  a  direct  intervention  as 
this  than  in  the  whole  tone  and  temper  of  his 
poem  that  he  reveals  to  us  his  delicate  and 
beautiful  nature.  Milton  confesses  himself  in 
both  ways.  His  high  seriousness,  his  proud 
and  resolute  will,  his  grave  sadness  at  the 
folly  of  mankind,  are  interwoven  in  the  whole 
of  his  story.  Then  in  the  speeches  he  will 
often,  as  in  this  of  Belial,  forget  altogether 
who  is  speaking  and  where  and  when,  forget 
Satan  and  Adam,  Eden  and  Hell,  and  make 
his  human  escape  to  his  own  time  and  country 
and  to  himself.  The  extreme  limitations  of 
his  subject  made  something  of  this  kind 
almost  necessary.  When  all  had  been  done 
that  simile  and  prophecy  could  do  to  bring  in 
the  life  of  men  and  women  as  Milton's  readers 
knew  it  there  still  remained  the  difficulty 
that  Adam  and  his  angel  visitors  must  talk, 
and  that  before  the  Fall  there  was  almost 


PARADISE  LOST  177 

nothing  for  them  to  talk  about.  So  they 
constantly  talk  as  if  they  had  all  history 
behind  them  and  the  world's  processes  were 
to  them,  as  to  us,  old  and  familiar  things. 
"War  seemed  a  civil  game  To  this  uproar," 
says  Raphael,  as  if  he  were  fresh  from  reading 
Livy  or  Gibbon  and  had  all  the  wars  of 
Europe  and  Asia  in  his  memory.  Often 
Milton  calls  attention,  as  it  were,  to  his  own 
inconsistencies,  putting  in  an  apology  like 
that  of  Michael  when  he  talks  to  Adam  about 
Hamath  and  Hermon — 

"  Things  by  their  names  I  call  though   yet 
unnamed ;  " 

but  more  often  he  leaves  them  unexplained, 
perhaps  not  even  noticing  them  himself. 
These  difficulties  are  seen  at  their  worst 
in  the  very  earthly  geography  of  heaven 
and  its  very  unheavenly  military  operations  : 
and,  interesting  as  the  passages  are,  it  is 
difficult  to  forget  the  incongruity  of  Raphael 
and  Adam  discussing  the  Ptolemaic  and 
Copernican  theories  of  the  universe,  or  Adam 
moralizing  on  the  unhappiness  of  marriage 
as  if  he  had  studied  the  divorce  reports  or 
gone  through  a  course  of  modern  novels. 
Yet  few  and  foolish  are  the  readers  who  can 
dwell  on  dramatic  improbabilities  when  Adam 


178  MILTON 

is  pouring  out  the  bitter  cry  wrung  from 
Milton  by  the  still  unforgotten  miseries  of  his 
first  marriage — 

"  Oh  !   why  did  God, 
Creator  wise,  that  peopled  highest  Heaven 
With  Spirits  masculine,  create  at  last 
This  novelty  on  Earth,  this  fair  defect 
Of  Nature,  and  not  fill  the  World  at  once 
With  men  as  Angels,  without  feminine, 
Or  find  some  other  way  to  generate 
Mankind?     This  mischief  had  not  then  be- 
fallen, 
And  more  that  shall  befall;    innumerable 
Disturbances  on  Earth  through  female  snares, 
And   strait  conjunction  with  this   sex.     For 

either 
He  never  shall  find  out  fit  mate,  but  such 
As  some  misfortune  brings  him,  or, mistake; 
Or  whom  he  wishes  most  shall  seldom  gain, 
Through  her  perverseness,  but  shall  see  her 

gained 
By  a  far  worse,  or,  if  she  love,  withheld 
By  parents ;  or  his  happiest  choice  too  late 
Shall    meet,    already    linked    and    wedlock- 
bound 
To  a  fell  adversary,  his  hate  or  shame ; 
Which  infinite  calamity  shall  cause 
To   human   life,    and   household   peace   con- 
found." 


It  is  obvious  that  in  all  this  we  hear  the 
poet's  own  voice.  But  it  is  scarcely  fair  to 
quote  it  without  pointing  out  that  it  mus 


• 


PARADISE  LOST  179 

not  be  taken  alone.  The  common  notion 
that  Milton's  own  melancholy  experience  had 
made  him  a  purblind  misogynist  is  a  com- 
plete mistake.  No  one  has  praised  marriage 
as  he  has.  The  chastest  of  poets  is  as  little 
afraid  as  the  Prayer  Book  of  frank  acceptance 
of  the  physical  facts  which  must  commonly 
be  the  basis  of  its  spiritual  relation.  It  is 
the  whole  union  for  which  he  stands,  of  body, 
mind,  and  spirit.  He  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  this  same  Adam  the  most  eloquent  praise 
woman  ever  received,  culminating  in 

"  All  higher  Knowledge  in  her  presence  falls 
Degraded.     Wisdom  in  discourse  with  her 
Loses  discountenanced,  and  like  Folly  shows ; 
Authority  and  Reason  on  her  wait, 
As  one  intended  first,  not  after  made 
Occasionally  :   and,  to  consummate  all, 
Greatness  of  mind  and  nobleness  their  seat 
Build  in  her  loveliest,  and  create  an  awe 
About  her,  as  a  guard  angelic  placed." 

It  is  true  that  the  reply  of  the  Angel 
moderating  these  ardours  is  more  evidently 
Miltonic — 

"  what  transports  thee  so? 
An  outside  ?  fair  no  doubt  and  worthy  well 
Thy  cherishing,  thy  honouring,  and  thy  love ; 
Not  thy  subjection.     Weigh  with  her  thyself; 
Then  value.     Oft-times  nothing  profits  more 
Than  self-esteem,  grounded  on  just  and  right." 


180  MILTON 

But,  though  in  these  last  words  Raphael 
entirely  disappears  in  Milton,  the  poet  who 
could  conceive  the  panegyric  to  which  Raphael 
replies,  who  could  elsewhere  make  his  hero 
say  that  he  received  "  access  in  every  virtue  " 
from  the  looks  of  Eve,  had  assuredly  no  low 
ideal  of  what  a  woman  may  be.  Adam  speaks 
for  him  when  he  praises  love  as 

"  not  the  lowest  end  of  human  life;  " 

and  he  gives  us  a  true  corrective  of  the  over- 
severe  picture  of  Milton  which  half -knowledge 
is  apt  to  draw  when  he  goes  on  to  declare 
that 

"  not  to  irksome  toil,  but  to  delight, 
He  made  us,  and  delight  to  reason  joined." 

But  this  is  only  one  of  many  subjects  on 
which  Milton  lets  us  hear  his  own  voice  speak- 
ing through  his  characters.  We  hear  it  when 
Satan  cries  to  Beelzebub — 

"  Fallen  Cherub,  to  be  weak  is  miserable, 
Doing  or  suffering  :  " 

when  Raphael  reports  Nisroch  as  saying  of 
pain  and  pleasure  what  may  well  have  been 
felt  by  the  blind  poet  who  owed  his  knowledge 
of  pleasure  to  memory  only,  while  he  knew 


PARADISE  LOST  181 

pain  by  the  frequent  experience  of  one  of  the 
most  painful  of  diseases — 

"  sense  of  pleasure  we  may  well 
Spare  out  of  life,  perhaps,  and  not  repine, 
But  live  content,  which  is  the  calmest  life ; 
But  pain  is  perfect  misery,  the  worst 
Of  evils,  and,  excessive,  overturns 
All  patience : " 

we  hear  it  when  Adam,  like  a  weary  scholar, 
says  that 

"  not  to  know  at  large  of  things  remote 
From  use,  obscure  and  subtle,  but  to  know 
That  which  before  us  lies  in  daily  life, 
Is  the  prime  wisdom ;  " 

when  Raphael  asks,  like  a  Platonic  philo- 
sopher, 

"  what  if  Earth 
Be  but  the  shadow  of  Heaven,  and  things 

therein 
Each  to  other  like,  more  than  on  Earth  is 

thought?" 

when  Adam,  like  a  doubting  Christian  in  an 
age  of  speculation,  hesitates  for  a  moment 
about  the  efficacy  of  prayer — 

"  that   from   us   aught   should   ascend  to 
Heaven 
So  prevalent  as  to  concern  the  mind 
Of  God  high-blest,  or  to  incline  his  will, 
Hard  to  belief  may  seem :  " 


182  MILTON 

and  once  more  when  Adam  cries — 

"  solitude  sometimes  is  best  society," 

as  if  he,  like  the  blind  Milton,  was  worn  out 
by  twenty  years  of  contending  voices,  and 
longed  for  the  relief  of  silent  and  lonely 
thought. 

To  the  direct  interventions  of  the  poet 
there  is  less  need  to  call  attention  as,  of 
course,  no  reader  can  miss  them.  They 
are  probably  the  most  universally  admired 
passages  of  the?  poem.  Every  reader  who 
deserves  to  read  them  at  all  finds  himself 
unable  to  do  so  without  wishing  to  get  them 

!by  heart.  They  do  not  rival  the  daring 
splendour  of  the  scenes  in  hell :  nor  perhaps 
the  suave  and  gracious  perfection  of  the 
evening  scene  in  Paradise  in  the  fourth  book ; 
nor  can  they,  of  course,  exhibit  the  dramatic 
power  of  the  scene  that  precedes  and  still 
more  of  those  that  follow  the  Fall.  But 
nothing  in  the  whole  poem  moves  us  so  much. 
It  is  not  merely  that  Milton  has  exerted  his 
whole  mastery  of  his  art  to  make  their  every 
line  and  every  word  please  the  ear,  awaken 
the  memory,  stimulate  the  imagination,  lift 
the  whole  mental  and  emotional  nature  of 
the  reader  up  to  a  height  of  being  unknown 
to   its    ordinary    experience.      This    he    has 


PARADISE  LOST  183 

done  in  some  other  parts  of  his  poem.  But, 
fine  as  some  of  his  dramatic  touches  are,  the 
essence  of  his  genius  was  lyrical  and  not 
dramatic  or  objective  at  all.  And  so  none  of 
his  characters,  divine,  diabolic  or  human,  will 
ever  move  us  quite  as  he  moves  us  himself. 

Let  us  hear  the  most  beautiful  of  all  these 
confessions :  and  for  once  let  us  indulge 
ourselves  with  the  whole.  The  themes  that 
make  up  Milton's  great  symphony  ought  in 
truth  always  to  be  given  unbroken,  if  only 
that  were  possible.  Indeed,  there  is  a  sense 
in  which  it  may  be  said  that  nothing  less  than 
the  whole  poem  can  do  justice  to  a  design 
so  majestic  as  that  of  Paradise  Lost.  But 
in  any  case  it  is  certain  that  no  fragment  ot 
a  few  lines  can  convey  a  full  impression  of  the 
rhythmical,  intellectual,  imaginative  unity  of 
the  Miltonic  paragraph  or  section.  This  is  | 
above  all  conspicuous  in  the  great  speeches 
and  in  the  elaborate  introductions  that  pre-\ 
cede  the  first,  third,  seventh  and  ninth  books. [ 
Here  is  the  greatest  of  the  four;  the  most 
famous  of  Milton's  personal  interventions  in 
his  poem,  and  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
things  he  ever  wrote. 

"  Hail,  holy  Light,  offspring  of  Heaven  first- 
born! 
Or  of  the  Eternal  coeternal  beam 


184  MILTON 

May  I  express  thee  unblamed  ?     Since  God 

is  light, 
And  never  but  in  unapproached  light 
Dwelt  from  eternity ;  dwelt  then  in  thee, 
Bright  effluence  of  bright  essence  increate  ! 
Or  nearest  thou  rather  pure  Ethereal  stream, 
Whose  fountain  who  shall  tell  ?     Before  the 

Sun, 
Before  the  Heavens,  thou  wert,  and  at  the 

voice 
Of  God,  as  with  a  mantle,  didst  invest 
The  rising  World  of  waters  dark  and  deep, 
Won  from  the  void  and  formless  Infinite  ! 
Thee  I  revisit  now  with  bolder  wing, 
Escaped   the    Stygian   pool,    though    long 

detained 
In  that  obscure  sojourn,  while  in  my  flight, 
Through  utter  and  through  middle  Darkness 

borne, 
With   other   notes   than  to    the    Orphean 

lyre, 
I  sung  of  Chaos  and  eternal  Night, 
Taught  by  the  Heavenly  Muse  to  venture 

down 
The  dark  descent,  and  up  to  re-ascend, 
Though    hard    and    rare:     thee    I    revisit 

safe, 
And  feel  thy  sovran  vital  lamp ;   but  thou 
Revisit'st  not  these  eyes,  that  roll  in  vain 
To   find   thy    piercing   ray,   and    find    no 

dawn; 
So  thick  a  drop  serene  hath  quenched  their 

orbs,  i 

Or  dim  suffusion  veiled.     Yet  not  the  more 
Cease  I  to  wander  where  the  Muses  haunt 


PARADISE  LOST  185 

Clear  spring,  or  shady  grove,  or  sunny  hill, 
Smit  with  the  love  of  sacred  song ;  but  chief 
Thee,  Sion,  and  the  flowery  brooks  beneath, 
That  wash  thy  hallowed  feet,  and  warbling 

flow, 
Nightly  I  visit ;  nor  sometimes  forget 
Those  other  two  equalled  with  me  in  fate, 
So  were  I  equalled  with  them  in  renown, 
Blind  Thamyris  and  blind  Maeonides, 
And  Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old : 
Then  feed  on  thoughts  that  voluntary  move 
Harmonious  numbers ;   as  the  wakeful  bird 
Sings  darkling,  and,  in  shadiest  covert  hid, 
Tunes  her  nocturnal  note.     Thus  with  the 

year 
Seasons  return ;   but  not  to  me  returns 
Day  or  the  sweet  approach  of  even  or  morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom,  or  summer's  rose, 
Or  flocks,  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine ; 
But  cloud  instead  and  ever-during  dark 
Surrounds  me,  from  the  cheerful  ways  of 

men 
Cut  off,  and,  for  the  book  of  knowledge 

fair, 
Presented  with  a  universal  blank 
Of  Nature's  works,  to  me  expunged  and 

rased, 
And  wisdom  at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out. 
So  much  the  rather  thou,  Celestial  Light, 
Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  through  all  her 

powers 
Irradiate ;   there  plant  eyes ;    all  mist  from 

thence 
Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight." 


186  MILTON 

Not  all  the  poetry  of  all  the  world  can  pro- 
duce more  than  a  few  passages  that  equal  this 
in  moving  power.  Tears  are  not  very  far 
from  the  eye  that  is  passing  over  its  page : 
tears  in  which  sympathy  plays  a  smaller  part 
than  joy  at  the  discovery  that  human  words 
can  be  so  beautiful.  But  if  Milton  moves  us 
more  by  his  own  personality  than  by  that  of 
any  of  his  creations,  it  is  still  true  that  he  is 
not  so  entirely  without  dramatic  power  as 
has  sometimes  been  alleged.  No  one  would 
claim  for  him  that  he  was  one  of  the  great 
narrative  or  dramatic  masters.  But  his  weak- 
ness on  these  sides  is  so  obvious  that  there  has 
been  a  tendency  to  exaggerate  it.  We  notice 
the  undramatic  speeches  of  Satan  and  Adam  : 
we  notice  such  things  as  Eve's  dream  in  the 
fifth  book  which,  anticipating,  as  it  does,  so 
many  of  the  details  of  her  temptation,  renders 
her  fall  much  less  probable,  and  goes  far  to 
destroy  its  interest  when  it  occurs.  But  we 
are  slower  to  notice  the  admirable  dramatic 
management  of  such  a  scene  as  that  between 
Eve  and  the  Serpent  in  the  ninth  book.  And 
yet  how  finely  imagined  it  is,  in  all  its  suc- 
y  cessive  stages !  Satan,  at  first  "  stupidly 
>  good,"  overawed  at  Eve's  beauty  and  inno- 
t  cence;  then,  recovering  his  natural  malice, 
\and  beginning  his  attempt  by  appealing  to 


PARADISE  LOST  187 

two  things,  curiosity  and  the  love  of  flattery/ 
which  have  always  been  supposed  especially 
powerful  with  women;  and  Eve,  taking  no 
direct  notice  of  his  compliments  and  in 
appearance  surrendering  only  to  the  other 
bait  of  novelty  and  surprise ;  "  how  cam'st 
thou  speakable  of  mute  ? "  So  the  scene 
begins.  Flattery  has  ensured  the  tempter 
a  favourable  reception;  curiosity  gives  him 
the  chance  of  an  apparently  telling  argument. 
I  ate,  he  says,  of  the  fruit  of  a  certain  tree  and 
received  from  it  speech  and  reason.  But  I 
have  found  nothing  to  satisfy  my  new-won 
powers  till  I  saw  thee,  whom  I  now  desire  to 
worship  as  the  sovran  of  creation.  She 
affects  to  rebuke  the  flattery,  but  naturally 
asks  to  be  shown  the  tree  on  which  the 
wonderful  fruit  grows.  It  of  course  turns  out 
to  be  the  Forbidden  Tree  :  and  Eve  mentions 
the  prohibition  as  a  thing  final  and  un- 
questionable. He  meets  her  refusal  by  giving 
a  sinister  and  plausible  explanation  of  the 
prohibition.  Why  did  God  forbid  her  the 
fruit?  "Why,  but  to  keep  ye  low  and 
ignorant,  His  worshippers  ?  * '  God,  he  suggests, 
knows  too  well  that  as  the  fruit  had  raised 
the  serpent  from  brute  to  human,  so  it  would 
raise  the  woman  from  human  to  divine. 
Noon  and  hunger  come  to  fortify  his  argu- 


188  MILTON 

ments ;  and,  after  a  speech  in  which  she  adds 
one  more  of  her  own  drawn  from  the  name, 
the  Tree  of  Knowledge,  given  to  the  tree  by- 
God  Himself,  she  plucks  and  eats.  In  the 
first  ecstasy  of  pleasure  she  luxuriates  in 
joy  and  self-confidence.  Then  she  considers 
whether  she  shall  use  her  new  powers  to  make 
herself  the  equal  and  even  the  superior  of 
Adam.  The  prospect  tempts  her  :  but  she 
is  not  quite  free  from  fear  that  the  threatened 
punishment  of  death  may  after  all  descend 
upon  her.  And  that  suggests  the  picture  of 
u  Adam  wedded  to  another  Eve,"  which 
brings  her  swiftly  to  the  decision  that  Adam 
shall  share  with  her  her  fate,  whichever  it  be, 
bliss  or  woe.  In  this,  as  later  in  her  hasty 
proposal  of  suicide,  Eve  is  a  living  and  con- 
vincing human  figure.  To  the  stronger  and 
wiser  Adam  it  was  harder  to  give  life.  But 
what  could  be  finer  or  truer  than  his  instant 
repudiation  of  her  plausible  tale — 

"  How  art  thou  lost !  how  on  a  sudden  lost, 
Defaced,    deflowered,    and    now   to   death 
devote !  " 

followed  by  his  immediate  resolution  to  die 
with  her — 

"  And  me  with  thee  hath  ruined :  for  with  thee 
Certain  my  resolution  is  to  die. 
How  can  I  live  without  thee  ?  " 


PARADISE  LOST  189 

The    rest    follows    with    equal    probability. 
Once  resolved  to  unite  his  lot  with  hers,  he 
soon  finds  arguments  to  prove  that  that  lot 
is  not  likely  after  all  to  be  so  dreadful.    Having 
talked  himself  into  the  surrender  of  his  judg- 
ment he  eats,  and  having  eaten  he  goes  at 
once  all  lengths  of  extravagance,  folly  and 
sin.     Then  comes  the  reaction  and  the  in- 
evitable mutual  reproaches;    with  the  fine 
natural  touch  of  Eve  upbraiding  Adam  for  his 
weakness    in    yielding    to    her    request    and  \ 
granting  her  the  freedom  which  had  proved  j 
so  fatal.     So  the  ninth  book  closes.     When  j 
the  story  is  resumed  in  the  second  half  of  the 
tenth  book  we  get  the  tremendous  lamenta- 
tion of  Adam,  so  strangely  undramatic  in  its  \ 
argumentative  justification  of  his  own  punish-  ' 
ment,  so  full  of  true  drama  as  well  as  of 
magnificent  lyrical  power  in  its  cry  of  human  j 
misery  and  despair.     Then  follows  the  bitter 
attack  upon  Eve,  as  the  cause  of  all  his  woe  : 
and   the   whole   scene   is   concluded   by   her 
humble  and  beautiful  submission — 

"  While  yet  we  live,  scarce  one  short  hour 
perhaps, 
Between  us  two  let  there  be  peace  :  " 

by  their  reconciliation,  and  by  their  quiet  and 
resigned  acceptance  of  their  common  fate. 


190  MILTON 

It  was  perhaps  worth  while  to  go  through 
one  act  of  Milton's  drama  in  this  detail  to 
give  some  idea  of  the  skill  which  he  has  shown 
in  working  up  a  few  verses  of  Genesis  into  an 
elaborate  story.  But  no  detail,  no  fragmentary 
notes  of  any  kind,  even  when  they  deal  with 
matters  in  which  Milton  was  far  stronger  than 
he  was  on  the  side  of  narrative  or  drama,  can 
do  much  to  exhibit  the  greatness  of  Paradise 
Lost  For  that  there  is  only  one  way,  to  read  it. 
And,  as  we  said  just  now,  to  read  the  whole. 
It  is  true  that  you  cannot  read  it  for  the  in- 
terest of  the  story  as  you  can  all  the  Odyssey, 
much  of  the  Iliad  and  some  of  the  Mneid :  but 
the  poem  is  still  a  whole  and  you  need  the 
whole  to  judge  and  understand  it.  And  even 
the  weaker  books,  the  fifth,  the  seventh  and 
twelfth,  contain  episodes,  like  the  scene  between 
Abdiel  and  Satan  and  the  incomparable  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  poem,  which  are  among 
the  last  a  wise  reader  would  wish  to  miss, 
j  Moreover,  where  the  story  is  dullest  it  has 
(things  which  give,  perhaps,  the  most  astonish- 
ing proof  of  Milton's  power  of  style.  It  is 
true  that  he  does  himself  occasionally  fall 
into  the  empty  pomposity  which  characterized 
his  eighteenth-century  imitators  who  fancied 
that  big  words  could  turn  prose  into  poetry. 
So  he  talks  of  dried  fruits  as  "  what  by  frugal 


PARADISE  LOST  191 

storing  firmness  gains  To  nourish,  and  super- 
fluous moist  consumes."  But  the  thing  most 
remarkable  about  this  is  its  extreme  rarity. 
Taking  the  poem  as  a  whole,  the  mighty  music 
scarcely  ceases  :  the  majestic  flight  of  the  poet 
continues  uninterrupted  :  no  contrary  winds 
disturb  it,  no  weariness  brings  it  flagging 
down  to  earth.  There  is  nothing,  not  even 
theological  disputes,  out  of  which  he  cannot 
make  fine  verse,  and  occasionally  great 
poetry.  There  is  nothing,  however  great, 
that  he  cannot  make  his  own.  Just  as 
Shakspeare  took  the  noble  prose  of  North's 
Plutarch,  and  hardly  altering  a  word  made 
noble  poetry  of  it,  so  Milton  can  take  the 
Bible.  "For  now,"  says  Job,  "I  should 
have  lain  still  and  been  quiet,  I  should  have 
slept :  then  had  I  been  at  rest."  North  could 
not  rise  to  the  height  of  this.  But  even  this 
Milton  will  dare  to  lay  his  hand  upon :  and, 
if  even  he  cannot  lift  it  any  higher,  only  he 
could  have  touched  it  at  all  without  desecra- 
tion.    "  How  glad,"  says  Adam — 

"  how  glad  would  lay  me  down 
As  in  my  mother's  lap  !  There  I  should  rest, 
And  sleep  secure." 

Or  take  a  passage  like  that  of  the  Son  of  God 
clothing  Adam  and  Eve  after  the  Fall,  where 


192  MILTON 

many  Biblical  suggestions  are  gathered  to- 
gether— 

"  As  when  he  washed  his  servants'  feet,  so 

now 
As  father  of  his  family  he  clad 
Their  nakedness  with  skins  of  beasts,   or 

slain, 
Or,  as  the  snake,  with  youthful  coat  repaid ; 
And    thought    not    much    to    clothe    his 


The  full  appreciation  of  a  passage  like  this, 
so  very  simple,  so  apparently  obvious,  yet  so 
entirely  in  the  grand  style  which,  whether 
his  subject  stoops  or  soars,  very  rarely  fails 
Milton,  is  not  a  thing  of  one  reading  or  of  two. 
Milton,  the  greatest  artist  of  our  language, 
is  naturally  the  most  conspicuous  instance 
of  the  law  which  applies  to  all  great  art. 
Only  natures  as  rarely  endowed  with  the 
.receptive  gift  as  he  was  himself  with  the 
^creative  can  fully  appreciate  his  work  at 
the  first  reading.  Like  all  great  works  of  the 
imagination  it  has  generally  to  train,  some- 
times almost  to  create,  the  faculties  which 
are  to  appreciate  it  aright.  This  is  particu- 
larly true  in  the  case  of  classical  art,  where 
the  emotional  appeal,  though  just  as  real,  is 
much  less  apparent  because  it  is  so  much 
more  controlled  by  intellectual  sanity.   Gothic 


PARADISE  LOST  193 

and  Romantic  art  are  commonly  far  more 
instantaneous  in  the  impression  they  make, 
perhaps  because,  according  to  the  ingenious 
suggestion  of  the  Poet  Laureate,  they  admit 
at  once  of  more  daring  flights  of  the  imagina- 
tion and  of  stronger  realism  than  classical 
art  can  bear.  But  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  the  wonder  and  delight  which  every 
man  of  the  most  modest  aesthetic  capacity 
owes  to  them  can  in  the  end  keep  pace  with 
the  slower  growing  appreciation  of  the  uni- 
versality and  sanity  of  classical  work.  But 
this  is  an  old  dispute  not  likely  to  be  settled 
this  year  or  next.  Nor  does  it  affect  the  fact 
that  all  great  work,  even  Romantic  or  Gothic, 
gains  by  time  in  proportion  to  its  greatness. 
It  is  the  only  absolutely  certain  test  of  great- 
ness in  art.  The  instantly  popular  tune  is 
unendurable  in  six  months,  the  instantly 
popular  novel  or  poem  is  totally  fbrgotten 
in  a  year  or  two.  No  one  perceives  the  whole 
greatness  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  or  Sanso- 
vino's  Library  at  Venice,  or  the  music  of  Bach, 
or  the  poetry  of  Milton,  at  the  first  sight  or 
hearing.  No  competent  eye,  ear  or  mind 
fails  to  perceive  more  and  more  of  it  at  each 
renewed  experience.  Whatever  be  the  art, 
a  picture,  a  piece  of  sculpture,  a  book,  the 
test  is  the  same  :  the  cheap,  the  sentimental, 

G 


194  MILTON 

the  sensational,  the  merely  pretty,  lose  some- 
thing, be  it  little  or  much,  at  each  renewal  of 
acquaintance  :  the  great  work  steadily  gains. 
To  this  test  Paradise  Lost  can  fearlessly 
appeal.  It  is  not  meant  for  idle  hours  or 
empty  people.  It  is  not  amusing  in  the  lower 
sense  of  the  word.  It  is  not  as  exciting  as  it 
might  well  have  been.  It  is  probably  true 
that,  as  Johnson  said  with  his  usual  honesty, 
"  No  one  ever  wished  it  longer  than  it  is  "  : 
yet  there  is  equal  truth  in  another  remark  of 
his,  "  I  cannot  wish  Milton's  work  other  than 
it  is,"  and  in  the  implied  answer  to  his  bold 
question,  "  What  other  author  ever  soared  so 
high  or  sustained  his  flight  so  long?  "  The 
difficulty  for  Milton's  readers  is  that  they  do 
not  easily  soar,  and  still  less  easily  sustain 
their  soaring.  The  great  gifts  which  Johnson 
brought  to  the  criticism  of  literature  lay  far 
more  in  common  sense  and  in  a  profound 
insight  into  human  life  than  in  any  real  turn 
for  poetry.  Of  that  nearly  every  one  who 
to-day  gives  much  time  to  reading  poetry  will 
probably  have  as  much  as  he.  Such  people 
are  sometimes  mistakenly  content  with  a  single 
reading  of  Paradise  Lost  They  remember 
a  few  of  its  glories  and  the  rest  of  the 
poem  they  acquiesce  in  forgetting.  Let  them 
put  it  to  the  test  to  which  lovers  of  music 


PARADISE  LOST  195 

put  the  Symphonies  of  Beethoven  and  lovers 
of  sculpture  the  remains  of  the  Parthenon 
and  the  temple  of  the  Ephesian  Artemis. 
Let  them  give  the  little  time  required  to  read 
it  through  every  year,  or  every  second  year. 
They  will  find  more  in  it  the  second  time  than 
they  did  the  first,  and  much  more  the  fifth  or 
the  tenth  time.  It  will  issue  triumphantly 
from,  the  trial :  and  before  they  reach  middle 
age  they  will  know  by  their  own  personal 
experience,  what  the  best  authorities  have 
always  told  them,  that  this  is  one  of  those 
rare  works  of  human  genius  whose  power 
and  beauty  may  in  sober  truth  be  called 
inexhaustible. 


CHAPTER  V 

PARADISE  REGAINED  AND  SAMSON 
AGONISTES 

Paradise  Regained,  like  the  Odyssey,  the 
Mneid  and  the  second  part  of  Faust,  has  been 
an  inevitable  victim  of  the  human  taste  for 
comparison.  It  cannot  fail  to  be  compared 
with  Paradise  Lost  and  cannot  fail  to  suffer 
by  it.  The  poets  and  critics  have  indeed 
been  kinder  to  it  than  the  public.  Johnson 
said  that  if  it  had  not  been  written  by  Milton 
"  it  would  receive  universal  praise."  Words- 
worth thought  it  "  the  most  perfect  in  execu- 
tion of  anything  written  by  Milton."  But 
the  great  body  of  readers  finds  an  epic  with 
only  two  main  actors  in  it,  and  hardly  any- 
thing that  can  be  called  a  story,  too  severe 
a  demand  upon  its  poetic  taste.  And  when 
unprofessional  opinion  remains  constant  for 
several  generations,  as  it  has  in  this  case,  it 
is  never  wise  to  ignore  or  defy  it.  Paradise 
Regained  is  a  very  bare  poem.  It  has  none 
of  the  splendours  of  its  predecessor :  no 
196 


PARADISE  REGAINED  197 

scenes  in  which  we  hear  the  full  voice  of 
that  Milton 

"  Whose  Titan  angels,  Gabriel,  Abdiel, 
Starr'd  from  Jehovah's  gorgeous  armouries, 
Tower,  as  the  deep-domed  empyrean 
Rings  to  the  roar  of  an  angel  onset; " 

nor  yet  any  of  those  others  which  delighted 
Tennyson  even  more,  the  scenes  of  Adam's 

"bowery  loneliness, 
The  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse  and  cedar  arches." 

It  has  no  love,  no  sin,  no  quarrel,  no 
reconciliation,  no  central  moment  of  tragic 
suspense,  indeed  no  human  action  at  all.  And 
Milton  has  refrained  almost  absolutely  from 
adorning  it  with  the  similes  which  are  among 
the  chief  glories  of  Paradise  Lost.  It  is,  in 
fact,  as  Mark  Pattison  has  said,  "  probably 
the  most  unadorned  poem  extant  in  any 
language." 

At  the  very  beginning  of  Paradise  Lost 
Milton  had  cast  his  eye  on  to  that  second 
chapter  in^the  Christian  history  of  man  with- 
out which  the  first  is  a  mere  picture  of  despair. 
His  subject  was  to  be  man's  first  disobedience 
and  its  results;    death,  woe  and  loss  of  Eden 

"  till  one  greater  Man 
Restore  us  and  regain  the  blissful  seat." 


198  MILTON 

Whether  he  then  had  any  thought  of 
attempting  to  deal  with  that  restoration  we 
do  not  know.  Nor  do  we  know  what  motives 
induced  him  to  choose  the  story  of  the 
Temptation  in  the  Wilderness  as  the  action 
in  which  the  new  order  of  things  was  to  be 
manifested.  Some  critics  have  been  sur- 
prised that  he  did  not  take  the  Crucifixion  or 
the  Resurrection.  And  it  is  obvious  that  the 
first,  with  the  Tree  of  Calvary  pointing  back 
to  the  Tree  in  the  Garden,  would  have  afforded 
a  natural  sequence  to  Paradise  Lost  Others 
have  wondered  that  he  did  not  use  the 
Descent  into  Hell  in  which  the  liberation  of 
Satan's  captives  would  have  followed  on  the 
story  of  how  they  fell  into  his  power.  And 
it  is  obvious  that  there  were  great  poetic,  and 
especially  Miltonic,  possibilities  in  the  theme 
of  the  victorious  Son  of  God  entering  the 
very  kingdom  in  which  the  Satan  of  Paradise 
Lost  had  exercised  such  splendid  rule,  and 
setting  free  the  saints  and  prophets  and  kings 
of  the  Old  Testament.  But  it  is  possible,  as 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  has  suggested,  that  Milton 
was  no  longer  in  the  vein  for  grandiose  themes 
of  external  majesty  and  might  such  as  this 
story  would  have  afforded.  "  His  interest 
was  now  centred  rather  in  the  sayings  of  the 
wise  than  in  the  deeds  of  the  mighty."     That 


PARADISE  REGAINED  199 

may  be  so  :  though  his  Samson  which  was  yet 
to  come  is  certainly  not  without  its  mighty 
deeds.  But,  whatever  were  his  reasons  for 
putting  aside  such  subjects  as  the  Descent 
into  Hell,  it  is  not  difficult  to  discover  several 
which  he  probably  found  decisive  in  inducing 
him  to  prefer  the  Temptation  to  the  Passion. 
To  begin  with,  he  must  have  been  conscious 
of  the  immensely  greater  difficulty  of  handling 
the  story  of  the  Passion  in  such  a  way  that 
Christian  readers  could  bear  to  read  it.  Then, 
even  more  certainly  operative  on  his  mind 
was  the  fact  that  the  Passion  is  related  to  us 
in  great  detail,  the  Temptation  in  a  few  words 
of  mysterious  import;  so  that  the  one  leaves 
almost  no  freedom  of  invention  to  the  poet, 
while  the  other  scarcely  binds  him  at  all. 
Then  again  there  is  the  close  parallelism  be- 
tween the  temptation  in  the  Garden  and  the 
temptation  in  the  Wilderness;  and  finally, 
most  important  of  all,  the  fact  that  the  Tempta- 
tion is  the  only  event  in  the  life  of  Christ  in 
which  Satan  plays  a  visible  and  important 
part.  A  poem  that  was  to  be  a  second 
part  of  Paradise  Lost  could  not  do  without 
Satan ;  and  in  fact  he  is  even  more  prominent 
in  Paradise  Regained,  where  he  is  present 
throughout,  than  in  its  predecessor  of  which 
there   are   several   books   which    scarcely   so 


200  MILTON 

much  as  mention  him.     This  was  no  doubt 
decisive. 

So  Milton  chose  the  Temptation  in  the 
Wilderness  as  his  subject,  with  Satan  once 
more  as  one  of  the  two  principal  actors  in 
his  story.  But  the  actor  is  even  more  changed 
than  the  story.  The  Satan  of  the  later  poem 
is  no  longer  the  splendid  rebel  of  Paradise 
Lost  Paradise  Regained  has  in  it  no  heavenly 
battles  and  its  council  of  devils  is  a  mere 
shadow  of  the  great  parliament  of  hell.  It 
has,  therefore,  no  place  either  for  the  general 
of  the  infernal  armies  or  for  the  Prime  Minister 
of  the  infernal  Senate.  The  magnificent  figure 
who  imposes  himself  on  the  imagination — 

"  Like  Teneriffe  or  Atlas  unremoved  " — 

becomes  in  it  something  far  less  impressive, 
a  political  theorist  instead  of  a  statesman,  a 
student  of  the  balance  of  power  instead  of  a 
soldier,  a  casuistical  disputant  about  culture 
and  morals  in  place  of  a  devil  venturing  all 
for  empire  and  revenge.  It  is  as  if  Alexander 
were  exchanged  for  Aristotle  :  almost  as  if 
St.  George  were  replaced  by  Mr.  Worldly 
Wiseman.  The  imagination  is  affected  by 
the  inevitable  loss  of  colour,  and  Paradise 
Regained  is  the  sufferer  in  fame  and  popularity. 
It  also  suffers  from  the  old  difficulty  in- 


PARADISE  REGAINED  201 

herent  in  supernatural  personages  which 
affects  it  even  more  than  Paradise  Lost. 
The  whole  action  is  a  succession  of  Tempta- 
tions. The  question  how  far  such  attempts 
by  a  devil  upon  a  Divine  Being  can  afford 
any  hope  to  the  one  or  any  fear  or  danger  to 
the  other  is  a  mystery  of  which  the  Church 
itself  scarcely  claims  to  offer  a  full  explana- 
tion. Into  the  theological  difficulty  this  is 
not  the  place  to  enter.  It  is  only  with  the 
corresponding  poetic  difficulty  which  we  are 
concerned.  Just  as  in  Paradise  Lost  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  the  unreality  of  the 
war  in  heaven,  so  in  Paradise  Regained  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel,  in  spite  of  some  incon- 
sistency of  language  on  the  subject,  that 
Satan  commonly  knows  who  it  is  whom  he 
is  assailing  and  is  known  by  Him  in  return, 
and  that  consequently  the  whole  action  has 
for  poetic  purposes  a  certain  unreality.  He 
knows  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God;  with  a 
right  to  the  homage  of  all  nature  and  the 
power  to  take  all  as  His  own.     He  asks — 

"  Hast  thou  not  right  to  all  created  things  ? 
Owe  not  all  creatures,  by  just  right,  to  thee 
service  ?  " 

Yet  he  discusses  with  Him  various  very 
human  methods  of  arriving  at  power,  just  as 

G2 


202  MILTON 

if  He  were  subject  to  the  same  conditions  as 
other  men  who  desire  to  rule  or  influence  the 
\  world.  The  consequence  is  that,  although 
the  speeches  contain  much  interesting  thought 
and  much  fine  poetry,  they  are  seldom  or 
never  dramatically  convincing.  Our  Lord,  in 
particular,  instead  of  the  gracious  and  winning 
figure  of  the  Gospels,  becomes  a  kind  of  self- 
sufficient  aristocratic  moralist.  His  speeches, 
as  Milton  gives  them,  display  Bather  the  defiant 
virtue  of  the  Stoic,  or  the  self-conscious 
righteousness  of  the  Pharisee,  than  the  simple 
and  loving  charity  of  the  Christian.  The 
weapon  of  moral  and  intellectual  contempt, 
so  freely  employed  in  them  and  so  natural 
both  to  Jew  and  to  Greek,  strikes  to  us  a 
false  and  jarring  note  when  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Him  who  taught  His  disciples  that 
the  only  way  of  entry  into  His  kingdom  was 
that  of  being  born  again  and  becoming  as 
little  children. 

These  are  all  serious  drawbacks  and  they 
are  not  the  only  ones.  If  from  one  point  of 
view  Milton  in  Paradise  Regained  is  too  little 
of  a  Christian,  from  another  he  is  too  much. 
One  of  the  gravest  difficulties  with  which 
Christian  apologists  have  always  had  to  con- 
tend is  the  entire  indifference  of  the  New 
Testament  and,   generally  speaking,   of   the 


PARADISE  REGAINED  203 

Church  in  all  ages,  especially  the  most  devout, 
not  only  to  economic  and  material  progress, 
but  to  all  elements  except  the  ethical  and 
spiritual  in  the  higher  civilization  of  humanity. 
At  its  friendliest  the  Church  has  hardly  ever 
been  willing  to  allow  to  such  things  any  in- 
herent or  independent  importance  of  their  own. 
Those  who  feel  that  they  owe  an  incalcul- 
able debt  to  art  and  poetry  and  philosophy 
and  therefore  to  the  Greeks,  have  inevitably 
found  this  attitude  a  stumbling-block.  And 
they  will  always  read  with  exceptional  surprise 
and  indignation  the  narrow  obscurantism  of  the 
speech  which  Milton,  scholar  and  artist  as  he 
was,  is  not  ashamed  to  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Christ  in  the  fourth  book.  He  cannot  himself 
have  been  a  victim  of  the  shallow  fallacy  ex-  # 
pressed  in  line  325  (he  who  reads  gets  little  f  j 
benefit  unless  he  brings  judgment  to  his 
reading  "and  what  he  brings  what  need  he  * 
elsewhere  seek?");  and  his  lifelong  practice 
shows  that  he  did  not  think  Greek  poetry  was 

"  Thin-sown  with  aught  of  profit  or  delight." 

Nor  could  he  have  seriously  thought  that  the 
Hebrew  prophets  taught  "  the  solid  rules  of 
civil  government,"  of  which  in  fact  they  knew 
nothing  except  on  the  moral  side,  better  than 
the  statesmen  and  philosophers  of  Rome  and 


204  MILTON 

Athens.  The  explanation  is,  perhaps,  partly 
that  Milton  was  an  Arian,  and  therefore  felt 
at  liberty  to  emphasize  the  Jewish  limita- 
tions of  Christ :  limitations  the  possibility  of 
which,  as  recent  controversies  have  shown, 
even  Athanasian  opinion  has  been  forced 
to  face.  But,  in  any  case,  in  the  Paradise 
Regained  stress  is  necessarily,  for  dramatic 
purposes,  laid  on  the  Hebrew  and  Messianic 
character  of  Christ,  and  from  that  point  of 
view  it  is  not  unnatural  to  make  Him  the 
spokesman  of  Hebrew  resistance  to  the  in- 
tellectual encroachments  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
Another  part  of  the  explanation  is  that  the 
strong  Biblical  and  Hebraic  element  in  Milton's 
character  does  seem  to  have  increased  in 
strength  during  his  later  years.  It  was  far 
from  getting  exclusive  possession  even  then, 
and  all  the  evidence  shows  that  he  was  always 
the  very  opposite  of  the  narrow-minded 
Puritan  fanatics  of  his  day.  But  his  tenden- 
cies in  that  direction  would  be  exaggerated 
while  he  was  occupied  with  a  purely  Biblical 
subject.  And  he  may  have  thought,  if  he 
thought  about  the  question  at  all,  that  the 
contemptuous  tone  adopted  about  classical 
culture  in  the  speech  of  Christ  was  not  only 
dramatically  defensible,  but  balanced  by  the 
far  finer  passage,  evidently  written  from  his 


PARADISE  REGAINED  205 

heart,  in  which  Satan  exalts  the  glories  of 
Athens.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  most  famous 
thing  in  the  poem. 

"  Look  once  more,  ere  we  leave  this  specular 
mount, 
Westward,    much    nearer    by    south-west: 

behold 
Where  on  the  iEgean  shore  a  city  stands, 
Built  nobly,  pure  the  air  and  light  the  soil — 
Athens,  the  eye  of  Greece,' mother  of  arts 
And  eloquence,  native  to  famous  wits 
Or  hospitable,  in  her  sweet  recess, 
City  or  suburban,  studious  walks  and  shades. 
See  there  the  olive-grove  of  Academe, 
Plato's  retirement,  where  the  Attic  bird 
Trills  her  thick-warbled  notes  the  summer 

long; 
There  flow'ry  hill  Hymettus,  with  the  sound 
Of  bees'  industrious  murmur,  oft  invites 
To  studious  musing;    there  Ilissus  rolls 
His  whispering  stream.     Within  the  walls 

then  view 
The  schools  of  ancient  sages,  his  who  bred 
Great  Alexander  to  subdue  the  world, 
Lyceum  there;  and  painted  Stoa  next. 
There  thou  shalt  hear  and  learn  the  secret 

power 
Of  harmony,  in  tones  and  numbers  hit 
By  voice  or  hand,   and  various-measured 

verse, 
iEolian  charms  and  Dorian  lyric  odes, 
And  his  who  gave  them  breath,  but  higher 

sung, 


206  MILTON 

Blind  Melesigenes,  thence  Homer  called, 
Whose  poem  Phoebus  challenged  for  his  own. 
Thence  what   the    lofty  grave   Tragedians 

taught 
In  chorus  or  iambic,  teachers  best 
Of  moral  prudence,  with  delight  received 
In  brief  sententious  precepts,   while  they 

treat 
Of  fate,  and  chance,  and  change  in  human 

life, 
High  actions  and  high  passions  best  de- 
scribing." 

It  is  plainly  the  very  voice  of  the  poet  him- 
self, and  he  may  have  felt  certain  that  we 
should  so  understand  it.  But  it  is  difficult 
not  to  regret  that  it  is  the  Devil  who  is  made 
to  pay  Milton's  great  debt  to  Athens  and 
Christ  who  is  made  to  repudiate  it. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  in  spite  of  its  disdain 
of  the  obvious  attractions  open  to  poetry,  in 
spite  of  much  in  it  that  alienates  the  sym- 
pathies of  many,  the  Paradise  Regained  has 
received  very  high  praise  from  the  finest 
judges  of  English  poetry.  Johnson  and 
Wordsworth  have  already  been  quoted,  and 
to  them  may  be  added  Coleridge,  who  says 
of  it  that  "  in  its  kind  it  is  the  most  perfect 
poem  extant,"  and  Mr.  Mackail,  who  has 
spoken  of  its  "  unique  poetic  qualities." 
Why  have  the  poets  and  critics  been  so  much 


PARADISE  REGAINED  207 

more  favourable  to  it  than  the  public  ?  Per- 
haps because  artists  are  always  inclined  to 
value  work  in  proportion  to  its  difficulties. 
Indeed,  this  fallacy  seems  natural  to  all 
classes  of  men  about  their  own  work.  Gar- 
deners in  England  tend  to  admire  a  man  who 
grows  indifferent  oranges  more  than  a  man 
who  grows  good  strawberries.  It  is  like  what 
Johnson  said  of  the  preaching  lady :  "  Sir,  a 
woman's  preaching  is  like  a  dog's  walking  on 
his  hinder  legs.  It  is  not  done  well ;  but  you 
are  surprised  to  find  it  done  at  all."  This 
tendency  to  let  surprise  sit  in  the  seat  which 
belongs  to  judgment  is  greatly  intensified  by 
professional  knowledge.  The  architect  is  apt 
to  exaggerate  the  merit  of  a  building  placed 
on  a  very  awkward  site,  the  artist  to  think  a 
piece  of  very  difficult  foreshortening  more 
beautiful  than  it  really  is.  The  public  may 
not  be  so  good  a  judge  either  of  the  building 
or  of  the  drawing :  but,  knowing  nothing  of 
the  technical  difficulties,  it  at  least  forms  its 
judgment  on  the  true  criterion  which  is,  of 
course,  the  value  of  the  product,  not  the 
surprisingness  of  its  having  been  produced 
or  the  difficulties  overcome  in  its  production. 
Something  of  this  kind  may  account  for 
the  fact  that  Paradise  Regained  has  been  more 
appreciated  by  the  poets  than  by  the  public. 


208  MILTON 

The  public  finds  it  rather  bare  and  dry  and 
judges  accordingly.  The  poets  know  how 
infinitely  hard  a  task  it  was  that  Milton  set 
himself,  and  find  no  praise  too  great  for  the 
man  who  did  not  fail  in  it.  They  see  a  poem 
of  two  thousand  lines  whose  single  subject  is 
the  attempt  of  a  devil  who  knows  himself 
doomed  to  defeat  to  persuade  a  divine 
Person  who  knows  Himself  assured  of 
victory  to  be  false  to  the  law  of  His  being. 
And  into  this  barren  theme  they  see  art  and 
nature,  ethics  and  politics,  luxury  and  splen- 
dour and  empire,  cunningly  interwoven  and 

"  Eden  raised  in  the  waste  Wilderness." 

They  see  a  style  stripped  of  almost  all  orna- 
ment especially  in  the  speeches  of  our  Lord  : 
the  poet  deliberately  walking  always  on  the 
very  edge  of  the  gulf  of  prose  and  yet  always 
as  one  perfectly  assured  that  into  that  gulf 
his  feet  can  never  fall.  Here  and  there,  as 
when  we  come  upon  such  lines  as 

"  I  never  liked  thy  talk,  thy  offers  less," 

we  are  nervous  as  we  watch  :  but  the  poet 
passes  on  his  way  serenely  unconscious  of  our 
fears,  and  in  the  very  next  speech  is  on  the 
heights  of  poetry  with  the  great  description 


PARADISE  REGAINED  209 

of  Athens.  Once  only,  perhaps,  in  the  reply 
to  Satan  after  the  storm — 

"  Me  worse  than  wet  thou  find'st  not," 

we  feel  that  the  cunningly  maintained  balance 
has  failed  and  that  the  limit  has  been  passed 
which  divides  the  severe  from  the  grotesque. 

The  truth  is  that,  if  the  narrowness  of  its 
subject  and  the  austerity  of  its  style  be 
admitted,  Paradise  Regained  is  a  poetic 
achievement  as  great  as  it  is  surprising.  It 
cannot  be  Paradise  Lost,  of  course,  and  that 
is  the  fault  for  which  it  has  not  been  forgiven. 
And  its  fine  things  are  even  less  evident,  much 
less  evident,  at  a  first  reading  than  those  of 
Paradise  Lost  But  Milton  has  left  nothing 
more  Miltonic.  He  did  greater  things  but 
nothing  in  which  he  stands  so  entirely  alone. 
There  is  no  poem  in  English,  perhaps  none  in 
any  language  of  the  world,  which  exhibits  to 
the  same  degree  the  inherent  power  of  style 
itself,  in  its  naked  essence,  unassisted  by  any 
of  its  visible  accessories.  There  are  in  it,  of 
course,  some  passages  of  characteristic  splen- 
dour, the  banquet  in  the  wilderness,  the  vision 
of  Rome,  and  others ;  but  a  large  part  of  the 
poem  is  as  bare  as  the  mountains  and,  to 
the  luxurious  and  conventional,  as  bleak  and 
forbidding.     Its  grave  Dorian  music,  scarcely 


*W. 


*h** 


210  MILTON 

heard  by  the  sensual  ear,  ir  played  by  the 
mind  to  the  spirit  and  by  the  spirit  to  the 
mind.  Ever  present  as  its  art  is,  it  is  an  art 
infinitely  removed  from  that  to  which  all  the 
world  at  once  responds  and  surrenders.  It  is 
not  at  first  seen  to  be  art  at  all.  The  verse 
which  in  truth  dances  so  cunningly  appears 
to  the  uninitiated  to  stumble  and  halt.  The 
music,  which  the  common  ear  is  so  slow 
to  catch,  makes  us  think  of  those  Platonic 
mysteries  of  abstract  number  seen  only  in 
their  perfection  by  some  godlike  mathema- 
tician who  lives  rapt  above  sense  and  matter 
in  the  contemplation  of  the  Idea  of  Good. 

But,  if  there  is  much  in  an  art  so  con- 
summate as  Milton's  which  escapes  analysis, 
there  are  also  elements  which  can  be  measured 
and  weighed.  Here  as  in  the  Paradise  Lost 
students  of  metre  can  count  and  compare  his 
stresses  and  pauses,  and  set  out  some  finite 
portion  of  the  infinite  variety  of  rhythms 
which,  even  more  needed  here  than  in  Paradise 
Lost,  sustain  the  poem  in  its  difficult  flight 
over  so  apparently  barren  a  country.  The 
art  of  the  poet  as  distinct  from  the  musician 
is  less  difficult  to  trace.  An  avowed  sequel 
has  to  recall  its  predecessor  and  yet  not  to 
recall  it  too  much.  Paradise  Regained  recalls 
Paradise  Lost  by  its  central  action,  a  tempta- 


PARADISE  REGAINED  211 

tion,  by  its  council  of  devils,  by  its  assembly 
of  the  heavenly  host,  by  a  hundred  echoes  of 
phrase  and  circumstance.  But  though  the 
heavenly  host  is  itself  unchanged,  though  it  is 
still  the  old  "  full  frequence  bright  Of  Angels  " 
yet  there  is  now  no  real  council.  The  Son, 
the  only  spokesman  who  can  address  the 
Father,  is  no  longer  present,  and  even  the 
hymn  of  the  angels  gets  no  more  than  a  vague 
description.  A  greater  change  has  come  over 
the  infernal  council :  scarcely  any  longer 
infernal,  for  their  leader  can  now  open  his 
address  to  them  with 

"  O  ancient  Powers  of  Air  and  this  wide 
World," 

and  the  meeting  is  held  in  mid  air  and  no 
longer  in  hell.  Nor  is  any  rivalry  attempted 
with  the  great  debate  of  Paradise  Lost :  only 
enough  to  awaken  its  memory  in  the  reader 
and  to  enable  the  poet  to  find  a  place  in 
the  second  meeting  for  the  most  obvious  of 
temptations  which  yet  reverence  forbade  him 
to  introduce  into  the  main  action.  And  note 
how  this  contains  at  least  one  of  those  small 
dramatic  touches  for  which,  except  from  Mr. 
Mackail,  Milton  has  got  too  little  credit. 
Satan  asks  how  he  is  to  assail  the  new  enemy  : 
and  Belial,  who  stands  for  the  sensualist  man 
of  the  world,   at  once  offers  his  suggestion. 


212  MILTON 

He  is  sure,  as  such  men  always  are,  that 
the  lowest  motive  is  invariably  the  true  main- 
spring and  explanation  of  all  human  actions  : 
there  is  no  beating  about  the  bush  with  him : 
he  is  frank  and  cynical,  and  begins  at  once 
without  shame,  apology  or  preface — 

"  Set  women  in  his  eye  and  in  his  walk." 

What  could  be  more  exactly  in  the  downright 
manner  affected  by  men  of  his  type  in  the 
world  of  to-day  and  every  day?  And  there 
are  other  similar  touches.  Then  again  the 
sequel  recalls  its  predecessor  when  we  hear 
Satan  strike  the  very  note  he  struck  so  often 
in  Paradise  Lost — 

"  'Tis  true,  I  am  that  Spirit  unfortunate," 

and  when  we  see  him  fall  in  ruin  at  the  awful 
end  of  the  long  debate — 

"  Now  shew  thy  progeny ;  if  not  to  stand 
Cast  thyself  down ;  safely,  if  Son  of  God ; 
For  it  is  written :  '  He  will  give  command 
Concerning   thee   to   his  Angels :    in   their 

hands 
They  shall  uplift  tKee,  lest  at  any  time 
Thou  chance  to  dash  thy  foot  against  a 

stone.' 
To  whom  thus  Jesus  :  Also  it  is  written 
'  Tempt  not  the  Lord  thy  God.'     He  said, 

and  stood : 
But  Satan,  smitten  with  amazement,  fell," 


PARADISE  REGAINED  213 

Nor  must  it  be  supposed  by  those  who 
have  not  read  the  Paradise  Regained  that  the 
bareness  of  its  style  is  invariable.  Most  con- 
spicuous, for  reasons  of  reverence  no  doubt,  in 
the  speeches  of  Christ,  it  is  far  less  marked 
in  those  of  Satan  and  disappears  altogether 
in  some  of  the  descriptive  passages.  Take, 
for  instance,  the  famous  temptation  of  the 
banquet — 

"  He  spake  no  dream ;  for,  as  his  words  had  end, 
Our  Saviour,  lifting  up  his  eyes,  beheld 
In  ample  space  under  the  broadest  shade, 
A  table  richly  spread  in  regal  mode, 
With  dishes  piled,  and  meats  of  noblest  sort 
And  savour ;  beasts  of  chase,  or  fowl  of  game, 
In  pastry  built,  or  from  the  spit,  or  boiled, 
Grisamber-steamed ;    all   fish  from   sea  or 

shore 
Freshet  or  purling  brook,  of  shell  or  fin, 
And  exquisitest  name,  for  which  was  drained 
Pontus,  and  Lucrine  bay,  and  Afric  coast. 
Alas,  how  simple,  to  these  cates  compared, 
Was  that  crude  apple  that  diverted  Eve  ! 
And  at  a  stately  sideboard,  by  the  wine, 
That  fragrant  smell  diffused,  in  order  stood 
Tall  stripling  youths  rich-clad,  of  fairer  hue 
Than  Ganymed  or  Hylas ;  distant  more, 
Under  the  trees  now  tripped,  now  solemn 

stood, 
Nymphs  of  Diana's  train,  and  Naiades 
With  fruits  and  flowers  from  Amalthea's 

horn, 


214  MILTON 

And  ladies  of  the  Hesperides,  that  seemed 
Fairer  than  feigned  of  old,  or  fabled  since 
Of  faery  damsels  met  in  forest  wide 
By  knights  of  Logres,  or  of  Lyones, 
Lancelot,  or  Pelleas,  or  Pellenore." 

Paradise  Lost  itself  contains  no  more  in- 
tricately beautiful  passage  than  this.  It  is 
one  of  those  things  that  have  been  the  delight 
and  despair  of  poets  ever  since.  For  all  his 
disdain  of  the  follies  of  the  Middle  Age  Milton 
can  never  touch  the  old  romances,  as  Joseph 
Warton  well  noted,  without  immediately  rising 
into  the  most  exquisite  poetry :  and  this 
reluctant  homage  of  classical  genius  is  the 
greatest  tribute  ever  paid  to  their  undying 
fascination. 

But  of  course  such  a  passage  as  this  is  not 
typical  of  the  poem :  it  is  one  of  its  far- 
shining  heights  which  cannot  be  altogether 
missed  even  by  eyes  quite  blind  to  the  beauties 
of  the  lower  country  through  which  Paradise 
Regained  takes  the  most  part  of  its  course. 
Ordinarily  the  poem  is  grave,  plain  and  un- 
adorned, engaged  in  the  discussion  of  moral 
problems  which  give  little  opportunity  for  the 
more  obvious  graces  of  poetry.  The  interest 
of  the  speeches  which  constitute  the  bulk  of 
it  is  threefold  :  technical,  in  the  rhythmical 
or  metrical  skill  by  which  Milton  sustains  an 


PARADISE  REGAINED  215 

abstract  discourse  expressed  in  unadorned 
language  and  keeps  it  at  the  level  of  high 
poetry;  moral  or  intellectual,  the  interest 
of  the  subjects  discussed;  and,  the  greatest 
of  all  for  many  readers,  autobiographical, 
the  interest  of  the  evidence  they  afford  of 
the  poet's  own  thoughts  and  character.  All 
may  be  seen,  for  instance,  in  such  a  confession 
as  that  of  Satan  in  the  first  book — 

"  Envy,  they  say,  excites  me,  thus  to  gain 
Companions  of  my  misery  and  woe  ! 
At  first  it  may  be ;   but,  long  since  with  woe 
Nearer  acquainted,  now  I  feel  by  proof 
That  fellowship  in  pain  divides  not  smart, 
Nor  lightens  aught  each  man's  peculiar  load." 

There  is  scarcely  a  word  in  it  that  prose  cannot 
use  even  to-day.  The  thought  is  one  that 
might  come  from  any  moralist ;  there  is  nothing 
daring  or  imaginative  about  it.  Yet  out  of 
this  what  poetry  Milton  has  made !  The 
personal  emotion  of  it,  the  note  of  confession 
and  individual  experience,  has  lifted  it  alto- 
gether above  the  level  of  the  cold  maxims 
of  the  preacher  who  gives  no  sign  of  having 
suffered,  or  sinned,  or  so  much  as  lived,  him- 
self. Then  the  art  of  it :  so  entirely  unper- 
ceived  by  the  ordinary  reader,  so  invincible 
in  its  effect  upon  him.  The  whole  secret  of 
it  defies  analysis  :   but  a  few  ingredients  can 


216  MILTON 

be  detected.  There  is  comparatively  little 
of  Milton's  favourite  alliteration  :  the  tone 
of  the  passage  is  too  quiet  for  the  free  use  of 
an  artistic  device  so  instantly  visible.  But 
note  the  beautiful  line — 

"  Companions  of  my  misery  and  woe  " — 

itself  free  flowing  without  a  pause  of  any 
kind,  so  as  to  prepare  the  better  for  the 
full  pause  both  of  sense  and  of  rhythm  which 
separates  it  from  what  follows.  Then  there 
is  the  vivid  conversational  "  At  first  it  may 
be,"  and  its  pause,  contrasting  so  finely  with 
the  next  line  where  the  pause  is  also  after 
the  fifth  syllable,  but  with  a  totally  different 
effect.  Note  again  the  variety  of  rhythm 
which  distinguishes  the  last  two  lines.  Neither 
has  any  strong  pause  in  it :  and  they  might 
so  easily  have  been  a  monotonous  repetition. 
Is  it  fanciful  to  think  that,  perhaps  half  un- 
consciously, Milton  has  suggested  the  quick 
stab  of  pain  or  sorrow  in  the  swift  movement 
of  the  first :  and  that  the  long-drawn  rhythm 
of  the  second  is  meant  to  convey  something 
of  the  dull  years  of  misery  which  so  often 
follow  ?     Its  first  six  syllables — 

"  Nor  lightens  aught  each  man's," 

if  given  their  full  effect  of  sound,  take  perhaps 
half  as  long  again  to  read  as  the  first  six  of  the 


PARADISE  REGAINED  217 

preceding  line.  In  any  case,  whatever  was 
meant  by  it,  the  line  is  a  most  beautiful  one  in 
itself,  as  well  as  full  of  one  of  the  most  moving 
of  human  things,  a  strong  man's  confession 
that  his  strength  does  not  always  suffice  him. 
These  obviously  autobiographical  passages 
are  to  be  found  all  through  the  poem.  There 
are  the  stately  Roman  embassies  coming  and 
going  in  all  their  pomp  :  in  which  it  is  surely 
Cromwell's  Foreign  Secretary  who  sees  nothing 
but 

"  tedious  waste  of  time,  to  sit  and  hear 
So  many  hollow  compliments  and  lies, 
Outlandish  flatteries." 

There  is  the  old  contempt  of  war  and  those 
who  in  virtue  of  their  victories 

"  swell  with  pride,  and  must  be  titled  Gods," 

and  of  the  mob  who  praise  and  admire 

"  they  know  not  what, 
And  know  not  whom,  but  as  one  leads  the 

other ; 
And  what  delight  to  be  by  such  extolled, 
To  live  upon  their  tongues  and  be  their  talk  ? 
Of  whom  to  be  dispraised  were  no  small  praise, 
His  lot  who  dares  be  singularly  good." 

There  is  the  contempt  of  wealth — 

"  Extol  not  riches  then,  the  toil  of  fools, 
The  wise  man's  cumbrance,  if  not  snare ; n 


218  MILTON 

a  contempt  which  Milton  shares  with  nearly  all 
saints  and  heroes  and  most  philosophers ;  a  little 
ungratefully,  perhaps,  as  if  forgetting  that, 
compared  with  the  mass  of  men,  he  had  him- 
self always  been  rich,  and  that  what  he  owed 
to  the  toil  of  his  father  had  not  proved  in  his 
case  a  snare  or  a  cumbrance,  but  the  necessary 
condition  of  the  learning  and  the  leisure  he 
had  used  so  nobly.  Finally,  to  give  no 
more  instances,  there  is  the  confession  at 
once  so  personal  and  so  representative  of  the 
feeling  of  all  men  who  have  ever  made  the 
smallest  effort  to  live  well — 

"  Hard  are  the  ways  of  truth,  and  rough  to 

walk, 
Smooth  on  the  tongue  discoursed,  pleasing 

to  the  ear, 
And  tunable  as  sylvan  pipe  or  song." 

Who  knows  whether  behind  such  words  as 
these  there  lies  the  memory  of  some  rapturous 
vision  of  the  new  world  of  love  as  St.  Paul 
saw  it,  which  had  been  cooled  only  too  soon 
by  humbling  experience  of  the  difficulty  of 
"  bearing  all  things  "  when  all  things  included 
Salmasius,  or  an  unthankful  daughter  ? 

This  grave  introspective  note,  present  from 
the  first  in  everything  written  by  Milton  and 
far  more  conspicuous  in  Paradise  Regained 
than  in  Paradise  Lost  is  felt  still  more  in  the 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  219 

last  of  his  works,  the  drama  Samson  Agonistes. 
It  is  in  the  Greek  form  with  a  Chorus  :  and 
is  as  broodingly  full  as  iEschylus  or  Sophocles 
of  the  folly  of  man  and  the  uncertainty  and 
sadness  of  human  life ;  but  Milton  has  added 
an  angry  sternness  of  judgment  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  an  assured  faith  in 
divine  deliverance,  both  of  which  are  rather 
Hebrew  than  Greek.  Into  this  strange  drama, 
so  alien  from  all  the  literature  of  his  day, 
Milton  has  poured  all  the  thoughts  and 
emotions  with  which  the  spectacle  of  his  own 
life  filled  him.  All  through  it  we  hear  a  faith  | 
that  was  strong  but  never  blind  battling  with 
the  spectacle  of  the  wickedness  of  men  and 
the  dark  uncertainty  of  the  ways  of  God. 
The  Philistines  have  triumphed,  lords  sit 
kt  lordly  in  their  wine "  at  Whitehall,  the 
Dagon  of  prelatism  is  once  more  enthroned 
throughout  the  land,  the  saints  are  dispersed 
and  forsaken,  and  he  himself,  who  had  as  he 
thought  so  signally  borne  his  witness  for  God, 
sits  blind  and  sad  in  his  lonely  house,  "  to 
visitants  a  gaze  Or  pitied  object,"  with  no 
hope  left  of  high  service  to  his  country  and 
no  prospect  but  that  of  a  "  contemptible  old 
age  obscure."  No  doubt  he  did  not  always 
feel  like  that,  for  the  evidence  shows  him 
cheerful  and  friendly  in  company  :    and,  of 


220  MILTON 

course,  the  picture  has  undergone  the  imagina- 
tive heightening  of  art  besides  being  coloured 
by  the  story  of  Samson,  so  much  sadder  than 
Milton's  own.  But  the  lonely  hours  of  a 
blind  man  of  genius  who  has  fought  for  a 
great  cause  and  been  utterly  defeated  must 
often  be  full  of  the  hopeless  half-resigned  and 
half-rebellious  broodings  in  which  throughout 
Samson  we  hear  so  plainly  the  voice  of  Milton 
himself. 

"  God  of  our  fathers  !  what  is  Man, 
That  thou  towards  him  with  hand  so  various — 
Or  might  I  say  contrarious  ? — 
Temper'st  thy  providence  through  his  short 

course ; 
Not  evenly,  as  thou  rulest 
The  angelic  orders  and  inferior  creatures  mute, 
Irrational  and  brute  ? 
Nor  do  I  name  of  men  the  common  rout, 
That  wandering  loose  about 
Grow  up  and  perish  as  the  summer  fly, 
Heads  without  name,  no  more  remembered; 
But  such  as  thou  hast  solemnly  elected, 
With  gifts  and  graces  eminently  adorned, 
To  some  great  work,  thy  glory, 
And  people's  safety,  which  in  part  they  effect : 
Yet  toward  these  thus  dignified  thou  oft, 
Amidst  their  highth  of  noon, 
Changest  thy  countenance  and  thy  hand,  with 

no  regard 
Of  highest  favours  past 
From  thee  on  them,  or  them  to  thee  of  service." 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  221 

This  is  Milton  undisguised  speaking  of  and 
for  himself.  And  so  is  the  still  sadder  out- 
burst in  the  very  first  speech  of  Samson — 

"  O  dark,  dark,  dark,  amid  the  blaze  of  noon, 
Irrecoverably  dark,  total  eclipse 
Without  all  hope  of  day  ! 
O  first-created  beam,  and  thou  great  Word, 
4  Let   there  be  light,   and  light  was  over 

all'; 
Why  am  I  thus  bereaved  thy  prime  decree  ? 
The  Sun  to  me  is  dark 
And  silent  as  the  Moon 
When  she  deserts  the  night, 
Hid  in  her  vacant  interlunar  cave. 
Since  light  so  necessary  is  to  life,     -"* 
And  almost  life  itself,  if  it  be  true 
That  light  is  in  the  soul, 
She  all  in  every  part,  why  was  the  sight 
To  such  a  tender  ball  as  the  eye  confined, 
So  obvious  and  so  easy  to  be  quenched, 
And    not,    as    feeling,    through    all    parts 

diffused, 
That  she  might  look  at  will  through  every 

pore? 
Then  had  I  not  been  thus  exiled  from  light, 
As  in  the  land  of  darkness,  yet  in  light, 
To  live  a  life  half  dead,  a  living  death, 
And  buried ;   but,  O  yet  more  miserable  ! 
Myself  my  sepulchre,  a  moving  grave ; 
Buried,  yet  not  exempt, 
By  privilege  of  death  and  burial, 
From  worst  of  other  evils,  pains,  and  wrongs, 
But  made  hereby  obnoxious  more 


222  MILTON 

To  all  the  miseries  of  life, 
Life  in  captivity 
Among  inhuman  foes." 

This  sublime  music  in  which  the  soul's 
emotion  finds  and  obeys  its  own  law  was 
scarcely  audible  to  the  age  which  followed 
Milton's  death,  when  poets  had  concentrated 
all  their  art  on  the  effort  to  make  both 
language  and  metre  as  instantaneously  in- 
telligible as  possible.  They  succeeded  much 
better  in  the  second  task  than  in  the  first :  for 
the  truth  is  that  the  exact  meaning  of  a  verse 
is  much  more  often  difficult  to  ascertain  in 
the  case  of  Pope  than  in  the  case  of  Milton. 
But  no  one  has  ever  doubted  how  to  read 
aloud  a  line  of  Pope  or  Dryden.  And  this 
has  obvious  advantages  and  was,  of  course, 
at  first  a  great  source  of  pleasure.  It  made 
Pope's  poetry  the  most  immediately  popular 
we  have  ever  had,  as  it  still  is  the  most  effec- 
tive for  public  quotation.  Almost  everybody, 
as  Sir.  Bridges  has  said,  "  has  a  natural  liking 
for  the  common  fundamental  rhythms  "  and 
"it  is  only  after  long  familiarity  with  them 
that  the  ear  grows  dissatisfied  and  wishes 
them  to  be  broken."  But  in  poetry  as  in 
music  the  more  cultivated  the  ear  the  sooner 
it  gets  tired  of  being  given  too  little  to  do: 
and  as  soon  as   every  warbler  had  Pope's 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  223 

tune  by  heart  critical  readers  began  to  wish 
for  something  less  obvious.  The  ultimate 
result  of  that  dissatisfaction  was  the  metrical 
experiments  of  Coleridge  and  the  rich  harvest 
of  varied  rhythms  and  melody  with  which 
Shelley  and  Tennyson  and  Swinburne  enriched 
the  nineteenth  century.  And  all  this  move- 
ment had  also,  of  course,  a  retrospective  effect. 
It  may  be  true  that,  as  Mr.  Bridges  says, 
"  there  are  very  few  persons  indeed  who  take 
such  a  natural  delight  in  rhythm  for  its  own 
sake  that  they  can  follow  with  pleasure  a 
learned  rhythm  which  is  very  rich  in  variety, 
and  the  beauty  of  which  is  its  perpetual  free- 
dom to  obey  the  sense  and  diction ; "  but  it 
could  not  fail  to  be  the  case  that  their  number 
was  increased  by  the  comparative  sensitive- 
ness to  the  more  intricate  music  of  words 
which  was  inevitably  produced  in  those  who 
had  learnt  much  Shelley  or  Tennyson  by  heart. 
And  such  people  at  once  heard  things  in 
Milton  which  were  absolutely  inaudible  to 
the  ears  of  Dr.  Johnson's  generation.  The 
comparative  subtlety,  both  in  imagination 
and  in  form,  of  the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth 
century  made  it  impossible  for  poets  to  com- 
pete with  journalists  for  the  attention  of  the 
big  public  as  Pope  had  done  triumphantly; 
but  as  a  set  off  against  that  loss  it  gave  a  far 


224  MILTON 

richer  delight  to  those  who  were  capable  of 
that  interaction  of  the  natural  ear  and  the 
spiritual  to  which  all  great  poetry  makes  its 
appeal.  This  led  straight  back  to  Milton  who 
made  that  double  appeal  as  only  a  very  few 
poets  in  all  the  world  have  ever  made  it.  And 
the  more  poetry  is  studied  and  loved  as  the 
greatest  of  the  arts,  as  the  medium  through 
which  that  combination  of  the  vision  of 
genius  with  the  slow  trained  cunning  of  the 
craftsman,  which  is  what  great  art  is,  finds 
its  most  perfect  expression,  the  more  will  men, 
or  at  least  Englishmen,  return  to  Milton.  And 
especially,  in  some  ways,  to  Samson,  where 
his  art  is  at  its  boldest  and  freest,  and  where 
it  suffered  longest  from  the  indifference  of 
dull  ears. 

A  little  book  of  this  kind  is  not  the  place 
for  a  discussion  of  English  metre,  or  even,  in 
any  detail,  of  Milton's.  Those  who  wish  to 
go  into  such  studies  will  find  much  of  what 
they  want  in  the  Poet  Laureate's  book  on 
Milton's  Prosody,  It  is  possible  to  disagree 
with  some  of  his  proposed  scansions  of  doubtful 
lines,  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  learn  a  great 
deal  from  suggestions  as  to  the  rhythmical 
effects  intended  by  Milton  which  come,  as 
these  do,  from  one  who  is  himself  a  master 
of  rhythm  and  has  never  concealed  the  fact 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  225 

that  Milton's  was  one  of  the  schools  in  which 
he  passed  his  apprenticeship.  So  his  analysis, 
line  by  line,  of  the  opening  of  the  first  chorus 
of  Samson  will  be  a  revelation  to  many  of 
what  they  have,  perhaps,  never  felt  at  all,  or 
felt  only  unconsciously  without  understanding 
anything  of  what  it  was  which  they  felt  or 
why.  But  even  without  such  help  no  one 
whose  ear  has  had  the  smallest  training 
can  fail  to  notice  some  of  the  more  daring 
of  Milton's  metrical  effects.  In  the  lines 
quoted  above,  for  instance,  who  can  miss  the 
triple  stab  of  passionate  agony  in  the  thrice 
repeated,  strongly  accented  "  dark,  dark, 
dark "  ?  The  most  careless  reader  cannot 
fail  to  be  arrested  by  the  line,  though  he  may 
not  realize  the  means  employed  by  Milton 
to  enforce  attention,  the  rare  six  stresses  in 
a  ten-syllabled  line,  the  still  rarer  effect  of 
three  strongly  stressed  syllables  following 
immediately  upon  one  another,  the  inversion 
of  three  out  of  the  five  stresses  of  the  next 
line,  "irrecoverably  dark"  suggesting  the 
spasmodic  disorder  of  violent  grief.  These 
are  certainly  devices  deliberately  chosen  for 
producing  the  required  effects.  And  so, 
probably,  are  the  more  regular  rhythm  of  the 
words  which  express  the  calming  aspiration 
up  to  the  throne  of  God,  and  the  quiet  mono- 


226  MILTON 

syllabic  simplicity  of  the  divine  utterance, 
"  Let  there  be  light,"  which  continues  its 
softening  influence  over  the  return  in  the 
following  lines  to  his  own  sad  conditions. 
How  smoothly  the  complaint  now  goes: 
"  The  sun  to  me  is  dark  And  silent  as  the 
moon."  It  is  in  comparison  with  the  earlier 
abruptness  as  if  he  had  gone  through  some- 
thing like  the  process  of  the  psalmist,  "  until 
I  went  into  the  sanctuary  of  God :  then 
understood  I  "  what  had  before  been  "  too 
painful  for  me."  Then  there  is  the  com- 
paratively unmarked  rhythm  of  the  intel- 
lectual argumentative  passage  which  follows  : 
till  emotion  begins  again  to  overwhelm 
reflection,  and  shows  itself  in  the  strong 
alliteration  of  "light,"  "land,"  "light," 
"  live,"  "  life,"  "  living,"  and  in  the  strong 
caesura  after  "  buried,"  the  more  marked  for 
coming  so  early  in  the  verse. 

Such  poor  noting  of  technicalities  as  this 
gives,  of  course,  no  more  of  the  secret  of 
Milton's  wonderful  poetry  than  anatomy  gives 
of  the  power  and  beauty  of  the  human  body. 
But  it  has  its  interest  and  even  its  use  :  pro- 
vided that  too  much  importance  is  not  attri- 
buted to  it  and  that  no  one  makes  the  mistake 
of  the  lady  who,  according  to  the  story, 
hopefully  asked  the  painter  what  he  mixed 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  227 

his  paints  with,   and  received  the  crushing 
reply,  "  With  my  brains,  Madam." 

Samson  Agonistes  stands  in  marked  contrast 
to  its  predecessor,  Paradise  Regained.  And 
not  only  in  being  a  drama.  Its  intense  omni- 
present emotion  makes  a  still  more  important 
difference.  In  passing  from  one  to  the  other 
we  pass  from  the  least  to  the  most  emotional 
of  Milton's  works.  This  would  in  any  case 
have  been  a  gain  for  most  readers :  but  the 
gain  is  made  more  important  by  the  extreme 
severity  of  Milton's  final  poetic  manner.  A 
style  which  excludes  almost  all  ornament 
stands  in  especial  need  of  the  support  of  a 
visibly  felt  emotion.  It  has  been  said  by  a 
living  writer  that  "  when  reason  is  subsidiary 
to  emotion  verse  is  the  right  means  of  expres- 
sion, and,  when  emotion  to  reason,  prose." 
This  is  roughly  true,  though  the  poetry  of 
mere  emotion  is  poor  stuff.  The  special 
faculty  of  the  poet,  as  Johnson  well  said,  is 
that  of  joining  music  with  reason.  That  is 
to  say  that  the  poet  unites  thought  and  feeling 
and  gives  them  perfect  expression.  They 
are  not  distinct :  they  become  in  his  hands  a 
new  single  life,  a  unity.  You  cannot  separate 
the  emotion  from  the  thought  in  any  great 
line  of  poetry.  When  Wordsworth  talks  of 
the  "  unimaginable  touch  of  time,"  there  is 


228  MILTON 

plainly  emotion  as  well  as  thought  and 
memory  in  his  words  :  when  Shelley  cries  in 
his  despair — 

"  Fresh  spring,  and  summer,  and  winter  hoar, 
Move  my  faint  heart  with  grief,  but  with 
delight 
No  more — O  never  more  !  " 

it  is  no  mere  cry  of  the  heart :  the  mind  is  in 
it  too  :  and  neither  in  him  nor  in  Wordsworth 
can  you  get  the  two  apart  again  after  the 
poet  has  joined  them  together. 

Now,  though  in  Paradise  Regained  the 
intellect  is  not  allowed,  as  in  much  eighteenth- 
century  poetry,  to  become  so  dominant  as 
to  make  us  feel  that  prose  and  not  verse  was 
the  proper  medium  for  what  the  poet  had  to 
say,  yet  it  does  play  a  greater  part  than  it 
can  commonly  play  with  safety,  perhaps  a 
greater  part  than  it  plays  in  any  other  English 
poem  of  the  first  rank.  It  is  only  Milton's 
unfailing  gift  of  poetic  style  which  saves  the 
situation.  He  could  do  what  Wordsworth 
could  not :  conduct  long  discussions  on 
abstract  questions  without  descending  from 
the  note  of  poetry  to  that  of  the  lecture-room. 
The  gallant  explorer  who  fights  his  way 
through  the  Prelude  and  the  Excursion  wins, 
as  he  deserves,  a  great  reward,  and  a  greater 
still  if  he  does  it  a  second  time  and  a  third, 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  229 

when  he  has  learnt  that  they  both  have 
marshy  valleys  into  which  he  need  not  twice 
descend.  But  he  has  paid  a  price  for  the 
lesson,  paid  it  in  the  endurance  of  a  great 
deal  of  solid  and  heavy  prose.  That  is  partly 
because  Wordsworth  often  thinks  without 
feeling  or  imagining  :  he  gives  us  his  thought 
as  it  is  in  itself,  as  a  professor  of  moral  philo- 
sophy gives  it,  without  passing  it  through  the 
transforming  processes  of  the  emotions  and 
the  imagination.  These  hardly  fail  Milton  half 
a  dozen  times  in  all  his  poetry :  and  the  result 
is  the  difference  between  such  lines  as — 

"  This  is  the  genuine  course,  the  aim,  and  end 
Of  prescient  reason ;   all  conclusions  else 
Are  abject,  vain,  presumptuous,  and  per- 
verse :  " 

and  such  as  Milton  writes  when  he  is  nearest 
to  bare  thinking — 

"  Who  therefore  seeks  in  these 
True  wisdom,  finds,  her  not,  or  by  delusion 
Far  worse,  her  false  resemblance  only  meets, 
An  empty  cloud." 

The  difference  is  also  partly  due  to  what, 
indeed,  is  another  side  of  the  same  distinction  : 
the  fact  that  Wordsworth  has  not  and  Milton 
has  a  constant  possession  of  the  great  or 
grand  style.  This  is  plain  in  such  passages 
as  those  just  quoted  :  it  is  plainer  still  where 
the    poets    come    close    to    each    other    in 


230  MILTON 

descriptive    passages :    as,   for    instance,   in 
Wordsworth's — 

"  Negro  ladies  in  white  muslin' gowns," 
and  Milton's — 

"  Dusk    faces    with    white    silken    turbans 
wreathed ;  " 

between  which  yawns  an  obviously  impassable 
gulf. 

Milton  is  sometimes  harsh,  crabbed,  grim  in 
expression  as  in  thought :  but  these  things 
are  not  at  all  necessarily  fatal  to  poetry  as  is 
the  cool  and  contented  obviousness  of  Words- 
worth's weak  moments.  Milton  is  occasion- 
ally contented  in  his  own  lofty  fashion,  but 
he  is  never  cool,  arid  never  less  so  than  in 
Samson.  All  through  it  he  is  face  to  face 
with  a  tremendous  issue  in  which  he  himself  is 
supremely  interested  :  he  is  "  enacting  hell," 
to  use  Goethe's  curious  phrase,  which  fits 
Milton  so  much  better  than  it  fits  the  serenity 
of  Homer.  Twenty  years  before  he  had 
written,  in  quite  another  connection,  "No 
man  knows  hell  like  him  who  converses  most 
in  heaven  "  :  and  now  in  his  old  age  he 
embodies  that  tremendous  truth  in  his  last 
poem.  All  his  poems  are  intensely  emotional 
and  personal :  but  none  so  much  so  as  Samson 
Agonistes,  where  he  is  fixing  all  eyes  on  the 


SAMSON   AGONISTES  231 

tragedy  of  his  own  life.  The  parallel  between 
Samson  and  Milton  does  not  extend,  of  course, 
to  all  the  details.  But  even  of  them  many 
correspond,  such  as  the  blindness,  the  dis- 
astrous marriage  with  "  the  daughter  of  an 
infidel,"  the  old  age  of  a  broken  and  defeated 
champion  of  God  become  a  gazing- stock  to 
triumphant  profanity.  But  more  than  any 
special  circumstance  it  is  the  whole  general 
position  of  Samson  as  a  man  dedicated  from 
his  birth  to  the  service  of  God,  and  gladly 
accepting  the  dedication,  yet  failing  in  his 
task  and  apparently  deserted  by  his  God, 
which  makes  of  him  a  type  in  which  Milton 
can  see  himself  and  the  Cromwellian  saints 
who  lie  ground  under  the  heels  of  the  victorious 
Philistines  of  the  Restoration.  To  him  as 
to  Samson  the  situation  is  one  that  makes 
questionings  on  the  dark  and  doubtful  ways 
of  God  unavoidable  :  darker  to  him  even  than 
to  Samson  :  for  he  has  no  guilty  memory  of 
a  supreme  act  of  folly  to  explain  the  divine 
desertion. 

The  action  of  the  drama  is  extremely 
simple.  Samson  is  found  enjoying  a  brief  re- 
spite from  his  punishment.  The  day  is  a  feast 
of  Dagon,  and  the  Philistine  "  superstition  " 
allows  no  work  to  be  done  on  it.  Accordingly 
an  attendant  who  is  a  mute  person  is  leading 


232  MILTON 

him  to  a  bank  where  he  is  accustomed  to  take 
what  rest  he  is  allowed  and  enjoy 

u  The  breath  of  heaven  fresh  blowing,  pure 
and  sweet 
With  day-spring  born;  " 

that  sensation  of  delicate  scents  and  cool 
breezes  which,  as  Milton  knew  only  too  well, 
mean  so  much  more  to  the  blind  than  to  those 
who  can  see.  Then  his  restless  thoughts 
'begin  to  crowd  upon  him — 

"  Why  was  my  breeding  ordered   and   pre- 
scribed 
As  of  a  person  separate  to  God, 
Designed  for  great  exploits  ?  " 

The  whole  passage  belongs  naturally  enough 
to  Samson  :  but  obviously  here,  as  well  as  in 
the  blindness,  the  poet  is  already  thinking  of 
himself.  So  again,  when  Samson  proceeds  to 
speak  of  being 

"  exposed 
To  daily  fraud,  contempt,  abuse,  and  wrong," 

one  can  scarcely  miss  a  reference  to  the 
daughters  who  purloined  and  sold  the  blind 
father's  books.  When  the  soliloquy  draws 
to  an  end  the  Chorus,  men  of  his  tribe,  come 
to  visit  Samson.  Not  even  Milton  ever  made 
the  arrangement  and  sound  of  words  do  more 
to  enforce  their  meaning  than  he  does  in  this 
wonderful  opening  chorus — 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  233 

"  This,  this  is  he;   softly  a  while; 
Let  us  not  break  in  upon  him. 
0  change  beyond  report,  thought,  or  belief ! " 

They  chant  their  inevitable  wonder  at  the 
contrast  between  what  Samson  was  and  what 
he  is. 

"  O  mirror  of  our  fickle  state, 
Since  man  on  earth,  unparalleled  ! 
The  rarer  thy  example  stands, 
By  how  much  from  the  top  of  wondrous 

glory* 
Strongest  of  mortal  men, 

To  lowest  pitch  of  abject  fortune  thou  art 
fallen." 

No  reader  of  Greek  can  fail  to  be  reminded 
of  more  than  one  chorus  in  the  (Edipus  of 
Sophocles — 

l<b  yeveal  figotcov 

cbg  vfiag  loa  xal  xo  [irjdev  £d>oag  evaQid/nco — 

"  Alas,  ye  generations  of  men,  how  utterly 
a  thing  of  nought  I  count  the  life  ye  have 
to  live  !  For  what  man  is  there  who  wins 
more  of  happiness  than  just  the  seeming  and 
after  the  semblance  a  falling  away.  With 
thy  fate  before  mine  eyes,  unhappy  (Edipus,  I 
can  call  no  earthly  creature  blest."  Here  and 
there,  as  in  this  passage,  the  parallel  is  very 
close.  But  Milton's  genius  is  too  great  and 
self-reliant  for  mere  imitation.  He  sometimes 
recalls  the  very  words  of  Greek  poets  as  he 


234  MILTON 

does  those  of  the  Bible :  but  that  is  not 
because  he  is  artificially  imitating  either,  but 
because  he  has  assimilated  the  spirit  of  both 
and  made  them  a  part  of  himself. 

The  Chorus  express  their  sympathy  with 
Samson  and  he  replies,  bitterly  reproaching 
his  own  folly  and  that  of  the  rulers  of  Judah 
who  gave  him  up  to  their  enemies.  But 
human  blindness  will  not  ultimately  defeat 
the  ways  of  God  :  and  the  Chorus  sing  their 
song  of  faith,  in  which  rhyme  is  called  in  to 
give  its  touch  of  impatient  contempt  at  the 
folly  of  the  atheist. 

"  Just  are  the  ways  of  God, 
And  justifiable  to  men ; 
Unless  there  be  who  think  not  God  at  all. 
If  any  be,  they  walk  obscure; 
For  of  such  doctrine  never  was  there  school, 
But  the  heart  of  the  fool, 
And  no  man  therein  doctor  but  himself." 

So  ends  the  first  act  or  episode  of  the 
drama.  The  second  is  the  visit  of  Samson's 
father  Manoah,  whose  cry  is — 

"  Who  would  be  now  a  father  in  my  stead  ?  " 

He  is  trying  to  negotiate  for  his  son's  ransom  : 
but  Samson  refuses,  not  desiring  life,  desiring 
rather  to  pay  the  full  penalty  of  his  sin.  He 
cannot  share  his  father's  hopes  that  God  will 
give  him  back  the  sight  he  so  misused — 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  235 

"  All  otherwise  to  me  my  thoughts  portend, 
That  these  dark  orbs  no  more  shall  treat 

with  light, 
Nor  the  other  light  of  life  continue  long, 
But  yield  to  double  darkness  nigh  at  hand  : 
So  much  I  feel  my  genial  spirits  droop, 
My  hopes  all  flat ;  Nature  within  me  seems 
In  all  her  functions  weary  of  herself ; 
My  race  of  glory  run,  and  race  of  shame, 
And  I  shall  shortly  be  with  them  that  rest.'8 

So  Manoah  leaves  him,  and  in  a  noble  lyric 
he  laments  over  his  greatest  sufferings,  which 
are  not  those  of  the  body  but  those  of  the 

mind — 

"  which  no  cooling  herb 
Or  med'cinal  liquor  can  assuage, 
Nor  breath  of  vernal  air  from  snowy  Alp." 

A  choral  song  on  the  mysterious  dealings 
of  God  closes  this  episode  which  is  followed 
by  the  most  dramatically  effective  in  the 
poem,  that  of  the  visit  of  Dalila.  The  moment 
the  blind  man  is  told  that  it  is  u  Dalila,  thy 
wife,"  he  cries — 

"  My  wife  !    my  traitress  !    let  her  not  come 
near  me  :  " 

and  his  reply  to  her  offer  of  penitence,  affec- 
tion and  help,  begins x  with  the  daringly 
expressive  line — 

"  Out,  out,  hyaena  !  these  are  thy  wonted  arts." 
A  long  and  telling  debate  follows,  in  which 


236  MILTON 

Dalila  makes  very  good  points,  one  of  them 
recalling  the  scene  in  which  Eve  reproaches 
Adam  for  indulging  her  instead  of  exercising 
his  right  to  command  and  control  the  weakness 
of  her  sex.  To  this  argument  Dalila  receives 
the  stern,  characteristicaiiy  Mil  tonic  reply — 

"  All   wickedness   is    weakness :     that   plea, 
therefore 
With  God  or  man  will  gain  thee  no  remis- 
sion," 

He  refuses  her  intercession  with  the  Philistine 
lords,  forbids  her  even  to  touch  his  hand; 

"  Not  for  thy  life,  lest  fierce  remembrance 
wake 
My  sudden  rage  to  tear  thee  joint  by  joint," 

and  drives  her  to  remind  him  defiantly  that, 
whatever  he  and  his  Hebrews  may  say  of  her, 
she  appeals  to  another  tribunal  of  fame — 

"  In  Ecron,  Gaza,  Asdod,  and  in  Gath, 
I  shall  be  named  among  the  famousest 
Of  women,  sung  at  solemn  festivals, 
Living  and  dead  recorded." 

So  she  goes  out,  and  the  Chorus  make  Miltonic 
meditations  on  the  unhappiness  of  marriage 
and  the  divinely  appointed  subjection  of 
women. 

The  next  visitor  is  Harapha,  the  Philistine 
giant,  who  comes  to  taunt  Samson,  and  is 
defied  by  him  to  mortal  combat.     This  epi- 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  237 

sode  is  perhaps  the  least  interesting,  but  it 
advances  the  action  by  exhibiting  Samson's 
returning  sense  that  God  is  still  with  him  and 
will  yet  do  some  great  work  through  him. 
It  fitly  leads  to  the  chorus — 

"  O,  how  comely  it  is,  and  how  reviving 
To  the  spirits  of  just  men  long  oppressed, 
When  God  into  the  hands  of  their  deliverer 
Puts  invincible  might, 
To   quell   the   mighty   of   the   earth,    the 

oppressor, 
The  brute  and  boisterous  force  of  violent 

men, 
Hardy  and  industrious  to  support 
Tyrannic  power,  but  raging  to  pursue 
The  righteous  and  all  such  as  honour  truth ! " 

In  the  next  scene  an  officer  comes  to  demand 
Samson's  presence  at  the  feast  of  Dagon  that 
he  may  entertain  the  Philistine  lords  with 
feats  of  strength.  He  at  first  dismisses  the 
messenger  with  a  contemptuous  refusal :  but, 
with  a  premonition  of  the  end  which  recalls 
(Edipus  at  Colonus,  he  suddenly  changes  his 

mind — 

"  I  begin  to  feel 
Some  rousing  motions  in  me,  which  dispose 
To  something  extraordinary  my  thoughts. 

•  •  ... 

If  there  be  aught  of  presage  in  the  mind, 
This  day  will  be1. remarkable  in  my  life 
By  some  great  act,  or  of  my  days  the  last." 


238  MILTON 

"  Go,  and  the  Holy  One 
Of  Israel  be  thy  guide," 

sing  the  Chorus  :  and  he  leaves  the  scene,  like 
CEdipus,  to  return  no  more,  but  to  be  more 
felt  in  his  absence  than  in  his  presence. 
Manoah  re-enters  to  utter  his  further  hopes 
of  ransom,  in  which  there  is  a  note  of  Sopho- 
clean  irony  recalling  the  ignorant  optimism 
of  (Edipus  in  the  Tyrannus;  and  as  he  and 
the  Chorus  talk  they  hear  at  first  a  loud 
shouting,  apparently  of  triumph,  and  then 
another  louder  and  more  terrible — 

Manoah. 

"  O  what  noise  ! 
Mercy  of  Heaven  !    what  hideous  noise  was 

that? 
Horribly  loud,  unlike  the  former  shout." 

Chorus. 

"  Noise  call  you  it,  or  universal  groan, 
As  if  the  whole  inhabitation  perished  ?  " 

They  dare  not  enter  the  city  :  and,  as  they 
speculate  on  what  this  great  event  can  be, 
a  Hebrew  spectator  of  the  catastrophe  comes 
up  and,  after  some  brief  exchange  of  question 
and  answer  exactly  in  the  manner  of  the  Greek 
tragedians,  tells  the  whole  story  at  length. 
The  end  has  come.  Samson  is  dead,  but 
death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory :  what  has 
happened  is  the  last  and  most  tremendous 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  239 

triumph  of  the  divinely  chosen  hero  whose 
death  is  more  fatal  to  his  country's  enemies 
than  even  his  life  had  been.  There  is  nothing 
left  to  do  but  to  close  the  drama,  as  most 
Greek  tragedies  close,  with  a  brief  choral  song 
of  submission  to  the  divine  governance  of  the 
world: 

"  All  is  best,  though  we  oft  doubt 
What  the  unsearchable  dispose 
Of  Highest  Wisdom  brings  about, 
And  ever  best  found  in  the  close. 

*  Oft  He  seems  to  hide  his  face, 
But  unexpectedly  returns, 
And  to  his  faithful  champion  hath  in  place 
Bore    witness    gloriously;     whence    Gaza 

mourns, 
And  all  that  band  them  to  resist 
His  uncontrollable  intent. 
His  servants  He,  with  new  acquist 
Of  true  experience  from  this  great  event, 
With  peace  and  consolation  hath  dismissed, 
And  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent." 

Such  is  Milton's  drama :  a  thing  worth 
dwelling  on  as  entirely  unique  in  any  modern 
language.  Some  good  judges  have  thought 
it  the  finest  of  his  works.  That  will  not  be 
admitted  if  poetry  is  to  be  judged  either  by 
universality  of  appeal  or  by  extent  and 
variety  of  range.  U Allegro  and  11  Penseroso 
will  always  have  far  more  readers :  and 
Paradise    Lost    embraces    an    immeasurably 


240  MILTON 

greater  span  of  human  life.  But,  if  not  the 
greatest,  Samson  is  probably  for  its  own 
audience  the  most  moving  of  Milton's  works. 
It  is  not  everybody  who  has  in  him  the  grave 
emotions  to  which  it  appeals  :  but  whoever 
has  will  find  them  stirred  by  Samson  as  few 
other  books  in  all  the  literature  of  the  world 
can  stir  them. 

It  is  curious  to  think  of  Milton  composing 
such  a  drama  in  the  midst  of  the  theatrical 
revival  of  the  Restoration.  Did  ever  poet 
set  himself  in  such  opposition  to  the  literary 
current  of  his  day?  Dryden's  unbounded 
admiration  for  him  is  well  known  :  but  he 
understood  the  genius  of  Paradise  Lost  so 
little  as  to  make  an  opera  out  of  it,  and  he 
must  have  understood  even  less  of  Samson. 
The  drama  was  then  so  much  the  most 
fashionable  form  of  literature  that  he  may 
have  felt  that  in  writing  The  State  of  Innocence 
and  its  preface  he  was  taking  the  best  means 
of  directing  public  attention  to  Paradise  Lost. 
But  he  would  scarcely  have  tried  to  do  the 
same  for  Samson.  He  had  wished,  perhaps,  as 
Mr.  Verrall  has  suggested,  to  write  an  epic  and 
had  failed  to  do  so :  hence  his  profound 
reverence  for  the  man  who  had  not  failed. 
But  he  had  written  many  dramas  and  here 
he  had  succeeded :    he  had  pleased  both  his 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  241 

contemporaries  and  himself.  He  would  feel 
no  need  there  to  take  lessons  from  Milton. 
Nor  is  he  to  be  blamed.  He  and  his  fellow 
dramatists  are  justly  criticized  for  many 
things,  but  there  is  nothing  to  complain  of 
in  their  unlikeness  to  Milton.  They  wrote 
for  the  stage.  He  avowedly  did  not.  They 
wrote  in  the  spirit  of  the  theatre  of  their  day, 
with  the  object  of  providing  themselves  with 
a  little  money  and  "  the  town  "  with  a  few 
hours  of  more  or  less  intellectual  amusement. 
He  wrote  out  of  his  own  mind  and  soul,  not 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  idle  folk  of  his 
own  or  any  other  day,  but  for  men  who  in 
all  times  and  countries  should  prove  capable 
of  knowing  a  great  work  when  they  saw  it. 
Besides,  his  contemporary  dramatists  followed, 
quite  legitimately,  the  theatrical  traditions 
of  England  or  France  :  he  the  very  different 
dramatic  system  of  the  Greeks.  His  drama 
is  what  Greek  tragedies  were,  an  act  of 
religion.  It  could  take  its  place  quite  natur- 
ally, as  they  did,  as  part  of  a  great  national 
religious  festival  performed  on  a  holy  day. 
It  is  like  them  in  the  solemn  music  of  its 
utterance  :  in  its  deep  sense  of  the  gravity 
of  the  issues  on  which  human  life  hangs.  It 
is  like  them  also  in  technical  points  such  as 
the  use  of  a  Chorus  to  give  expression  to  the 


242  MILTON 

spectator's  emotions,  the  paucity  of  actors  pre- 
sent on  the  stage  at  any  moment,  the  curious 
imitation,  to  be  seen  also  in  Comus,  of  the 
Greek  stichomuthia,  in  which  a  verbal  passage 
of  arms  is  conducted  on  the  principle  of  giving 
each  speaker  one  line  for  his  attack  or  retort. 

There  are,  indeed,  some  fundamental  differ- 
ences. They  are  important  enough  to  have 
led  so  great  a  critic  as  Professor  Jebb  to 
argue  that  Milton's  drama  is  too  Hebrew  to 
be  Hellenic  at  all.  His  point  is  that  Greek 
tragedy  aims  at  producing  an  imaginative 
pleasure  by  arousing  a  "  sense,  on  the  one 
hand,  of  the  heroic  in  man;  on  the  other 
hand,  of  a  superhuman  controlling  power  " ; 
and  he  asserts  that  this  is  not  the  method 
adopted  by  Milton  in  Samson.  Samson  is 
throughout  a  free  man;  his  misfortunes  are 
the  fruit  of  his  own  folly.  God  is  still  on  his 
side  and  his  death  is  a  patriotic  triumph,  not, 
like  the  death  of  Heracles,  who  resembles  him 
in  so  many  ways,  merely  the  final  proof  of 
the  all-powerful  malignity  of  fate. 

No  one  will  venture  to  differ  from  Jebb 
on  such  a  question  without  a  sense  of  great 
temerity.  But  perhaps  the  truth  is  that 
one  who  had  lived  all  his  life,  as  Jebb  had, 
in  the  closest  intimacy  with  the  Greek  drama, 
would  be  apt  to  feel  small  differences  from 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  243 

it  too  much  and  broad  resemblances  too 
little.  To  the  shepherd  all  his  sheep  differ 
from  each  other :  the  danger  for  him  is  to 
forget,  what  the  ignorant  stranger  sees,  that 
they  are  also  all  very  much  alike.  So  Jebb 
is  no  doubt  perfectly  right  in  the  distinc- 
tion he  makes  :  but  he  is  surely  blinded  by 
his  own  knowledge  when  he  argues  from  it 
that  Samson  Agonistes  "  is  a  great  poem  and 
a  noble  drama;  but  neither  as  poem  nor  as 
drama  is  it  Hellenic."  Of  that  question 
comparative  ignorance  is  perhaps  a  better 
judge.  For  it  can  still  see  that  the  broad 
division  which  separates  the  world's  drama 
into  two  kinds  is  a  real  thing,  and  that  Milton's 
drama  belongs  in  spite  of  differences  unques- 
tionably to  the  Greek  kind  and  not  to  the 
other,  both  by  its  method  and  by  its  spirit. 
There  can  be  no  real  doubt  that  it  is  far  more 
like  the  Prometheus  or  the  CEdipus  than  it  is 
like  Hamlet  or  All  for  Love.  Probably  no 
great  tragedy  of  any  sort  can  be  made  without 
that  sense  of  the  contrast  between  man's  will 
and  the  "  superhuman  controlling  power  "  of 
which  Jebb  speaks  as  peculiarly  Greek. 
Certainly  it  is  present  in  the  greatest  of 
Shakspeare's  tragedies,  and  not  seldom  finds 
open  expression.  "  There's  a  divinity  that 
shapes  our  ends." 

v 


244  MILTON 

But  the  point  is  that  in  Samson,  the  note 
of  which  is  always  the  classical,  never  the 
mystical  or  romantic,  this  sense  is  present, 
not  in  Shakspeare's  way,  but  substantially 
in  the  Greek  way.  The  fact  that  Samson  is 
free  and  that  his  God  is  his  friend  does  not 
prevent  his  feeling  just  in  the  Greek  way  that 
God's  ways  are  dark  and  inscrutable,  past 
man's  finding  out,  and  far  above  out  of  the 
reach  of  his  control.  It  does  not  prevent  his 
being  helpless  as  well  as  heroic,  fully  conscious 
that  all  his  strength  leaves  him  still  a  weak 
child  at  the  absolute  disposal  of  incompre- 
hensible Omnipotence.  So  the  whole  atmo- 
sphere of  the  play,  as  well  as  its  formal  mould, 
will  always  recall  the  Greek  tragedies.  And 
rightly  :  the  likenesses  of  every  kind  are  far 
greater  than  the  differences.  The  distinctions 
which  led  Jebb  to  declare  it  was  not  Hellenic 
at  all  are  far  less  important  than  the  kinship 
which  made  a  still  greater  critic,  the  poet 
Goethe,  declare  that  it  had  "  more  of  the 
antique  spirit  than  any  production  of  any 
other  modern  poet." 

A  more  obvious  and  perhaps  more  impor- 
tant difference  than  that  on  which  Jebb  lays 
such  stress  is,  of  course,  the  fundamental  one 
that  the  Greek  plays  were  written  for  per- 
formance   and    that    many    of    them    have 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  245 

elaborately  contrived  "  plots."  No  one  sup- 
poses that  Samson  would  be  effective  on  the 
stage;  but  the  modern  dramatist  who  could 
make  his  play  as  exciting  to  the  spectator  as 
the  CEdipus  Tyrannies  or  Electra  of  Sophocles, 
or  the  Hippolytus  or  Medea  of  Euripides, 
would  assuredly  be  no  ordinary  playwright. 
This  Milton  did  not  attempt.  His  drama 
resembles  rather  the  earlier  Greek  tragedies 
where  the  lyrical  element  is  still  the  principal 
thing  while  the  "  plot  "  and  the  persons  who 
act  its  story  play  a  comparatively  subordinate 
part.  It  is,  at  any  rate  in  form,  more  like 
iEschylus  than  Sophocles,  and  more  like  the 
Persce  and  the  Prometheus  than  the  Oresteian 
Trilogy.  To  the  Prometheus,  indeed,  it  bears 
particularly  close  and  obvious  resemblances; 
for  instance,  both  have  a  heroic  and  defiant 
prisoner  as  their  principal  figure,  and  as  their 
minor  figures  a  succession  of  friends  and 
enemies  who  visit  him. 

However,  literary  parallels  and  precedents 
of  this  kind  are  perhaps  rather  interesting 
than  important.  Milton's  greatness  is  his 
own.  Only  the  fact  remains  that,  as  it  was 
of  an  order  that  need  not  fear  to  measure 
itself  with  the  Greeks  and  as  he  happened  to 
put  its  dramatic  expression  into  a  Greek  form, 
he  has  given  us  something  which  comes  far 


246  MILTON 

nearer  to  producing  on  us  the  particular 
impression  of  sublimity  made  by  the  greatest 
Greek  dramas  than  anything  else  in  English  or 
perhaps  in  any  modern  language.  In  English 
nothing  worth  mentioning  of  the  kind  has 
been  attempted,  till  in  our  own  day  the  present 
Poet  Laureate  wrote  his  Prometheus  the  Fire- 
Giver  and  Achilles  in  Scyros.  But,  interesting 
and  beautiful  as  these  are,  they  make  no 
pretence  to  rival  Samson  Agonistes.  They 
are  altogether  on  a  smaller  scale  of  art,  of 
thought,  of  emotion. 

Samson  Agonistes  is  Milton's  last  word  and 
on  the  whole  his  saddest.  Yet  the  final  effect 
of  great  art  is  never  sad.  The  sense  of  great- 
ness transcends  all  pain.  In  the  preface  of 
Samson  Milton  alludes  to  Aristotle's  remark 
that  it  is  the  function  of  tragedy  to  effect 
through  pity  and  fear  a  proper  purgation  of 
these  emotions.  Whatever  be  the  precise 
meaning  of  that  famous  and  disputed  sentence, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  Milton  gives  part  of  its 
general  import  truly  enough  when  he  para- 
phrases it  "  to  temper  and  reduce  them  to  just 
measure  with  a  kind  of  delight  stirred  up  by 
reading  or  seeing  those  passions  well  imitated." 
And  its  application  extends  far  beyond  the 
mere  field  of  tragedy.  So  far  as  other  kinds 
of  poetry,  or  indeed  any  of  the  arts,  deal  with 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  247 

subjects  that  arouse  any  of  the  deeper  human 
emotions,  the  law  of  purification  by  a  kind 
of  delight  is  one  by  which  they  stand  or  fall. 
A  crucifixion  which  is  merely  painful,  as 
many  primitive  crucifixions  are,  or  merely 
disgusting,  as  many  later  ones  are,  is  so  far 
a  failure.  It  has  not  done  the  work  art  has 
to  do.  Shakspeare  knew  this  well  enough, 
though  he  very  likely  never  thought  about  it. 
The  final  word  of  his  great  tragedies  is  one  of 
sorrow  overpassed  and  transformed.  "  The 
rest  is  silence ;  "  "  Dost  thou  not  see  my 
baby  at  my  breast  That  sucks  the  nurse 
asleep ?  "  "I  have  almost  forgot  the  taste 
of  fears ;  "  "  My  heart  doth  joy  that  yet  in 
all  my  life  I  found  no  man  but  he  was  true  to 
me  !  "  This  is  the  note  always  struck  before 
the  very  end  comes.  And  Milton,  so  unlike 
Shakspeare  both  as  man  and  as  artist,  is  no 
less  conspicuous  than  he  in  the  strict  observ- 
ance of  this  practice./  All  his  poems,  without 
exception,  end  in  quietness  and  confidence. 
The  beauty  of  the  last  lines  of  Paradise  Lost, 
to  which  early  critics  were  so  strangely  blind, 
is  now  universally  celebrated — 

"  Some  natural  tears  they  dropped,  but  wiped 
them  soon ; 
The  world  was  all  before  them,  where  to 
choose 


248  MILTON 

Their  place  of  rest,  and  Providence  their 

guide. 
They,  hand  in  hand,  with  wandering  steps 

and  slow, 
Through  Eden  took  their  solitary  way." 

The  storm  and  stress  of  day  are  over  and  are 
followed  by  the  passionless  quiet  of  evening. 
So  in  Paradise  Regained.  A  modern  poet 
would  have  been  tempted  to  end  at  line  635, 
with  a  kind  of  dramatic  fall  of  the  curtain— 

"  on  thy  glorious  work 
Now  enter,  and  begin  to  save  Mankind." 

Not  so  Milton.  As  after  the  most  awe- 
inspiring  death  known  to  literature  the 
CEdipus  Coloneus  closes  on  the  note  of 
acquiescent  peace — 

"  Come,  cease  lamentation,  lift  it  up  no  more ; 
for  verily  these  things  stand  fast ;  " 

so  Milton  ends  the  long  debate  of  his  poem,  not 
with  victory,  but  with  silence — 

"  He,  unobserved, 
Home  to    his    mother's  house  private   re- 
turned." 

It  is  indeed  just  the  opposite  in  one  way 
of  the  conclusion  of  Paradise  Lost.  The  man 
and  woman  who  had  fallen  before  the  Tempter 
had  no  home  to  return  to  :  they  must  seek  a 
new  "  place  of  rest  "  elsewhere  in  the  new 
world  that  was  before  them.     The  Man  who 


SAMSON  AGONISTES  249 

had  vanquished  him  could  go  back  quietly 
to  the  home  of  his  childhood.  But  the  con- 
trast is  external,  the  likeness  essential.  For 
the  first  man  as  well  as  the  second  there  is 
an  appointed  place  of  rest  and  a  Providence 
to  guide  :  the  two  poems  can  both  end  on 
the  same  note  of  that  peace  which  follows 
upon  the  right  understanding  of  all  great 
experiences. 

This,  which  is  only  implied  in  his  earlier 
poems,  is  almost  expressly  set  forth  in  the 
last  of  all  Milton's  words,  the  already  quoted 
conclusion  of  Samson — 

"  His  servants  He,  with  new  acquist 
Of  true  experience  from  this  great  event, 
With  peace  and  consolation  hath  dismissed, 
And  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent." 

Milton  was  a  passionate  man  who  lived  in 
passionate  times.  Neither  his  passions  nor 
those  of  the  men  of  his  day  are  of  very  much 
matter  to  us  now.  But  the  art  in  which  he 
M  spent "  them,  in  which,  that  is  to  say,  he 
embodied,  transcended  and  glorified  them, 
till  through  it  he  and  we  alike  attain  to  con- 
solation and  calm,  is  an  eternal  possession 
not  only  of  the  English  race  but  of  the  whole 
world. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  literature  that  in  one  way  or  another  deals  with 
Milton  is,  of  course,  immense.  His  name  fills  more  than  half 
of  one  of  the  volumes  of  the  great  British  Museum  Catalogue, 
more  than  sixteen  pages  being  devoted  to  the  single  item 
of  Paradise  Lost.  They  afford  perhaps  the  most  striking 
of  all  proofs  of  the  universality  of  his  genius;  for  they 
include  translations  into  no  fewer  than  eighteen  languages, 
many  of  which  possess  a  large  choice  of  versions.  Into  more 
than  a  very  small  fraction  of  such  a  vast  field  it  is  obviously 
impossible  to  enter  here.  Only  a  few  notes  can  be  given, 
under  the  four  headings  of  Poetry,  Prose,  Biography  and 
Criticism. 

Poetry 

Of  the  poetry,  it  may  be  worth  saying,  though  MSS.  hardly 
come  within  the  scope  of  a  briei  bibliography  of  this  sort, 
that  a  manuscript,  mainly  in  the  handwriting  of  Milton 
himself  and  containing  many  of  his  early  poems,  is  preserved 
in  the  Library  01  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  The  printed 
copies,  of  course,  begin  with  those  published  in  his  own  life- 
time. They  contain  practically  the  whole  of  his  poetry. 
The  most  important  are  the  volume  containing  his  early 
poems  issued  in  1645,  Paradise  Lost  which  first  appeared  in 
1667,  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes  which  followed 
in  1671,  and  a  re-issue  in  1673,  with  additions,  of  the  volume 
of  his  minor  poems  already  printed  in  1645.  The  first  com- 
plete edition  was  The\  Poetical  Works  of  Mr.  John  Milton% 
issued  by  Jacob  Tonson  in  1695. 

So  much  for  the  bare  text.  Annotation  naturally  soon 
followed.  The  earliest  commentator  was  Patrick  Hume 
who  published  an  edition  of  the  poems  with  notes  on  Paradise 
Lost  in  1695.  But  the  most  famous,  though  also  least  im. 
portant,  of  Milton's  early  critics  was  the  greatest  of  English 
scholars,  Richard  Bentley,  who  in  1732  issued  an  edition  of 
Paradise  Lost  in  which  whole  passages  were  relegated  to  the 
margin  as  the  spurious  interpolations  of  an  imaginary  editor. 
Such  a  book  is,  of  course,  merely  a  curiosity  connecting  two 

250 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  251 

great  names.  The  real  beginning  in  the  work  of  editing 
Milton  as  a  classic  should  be  edited  t  was  made  by  Thomas 
Newton,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Bristol,  who  in  1749  brought 
out  an  edition  of  Paradise  Lost,  **  with  Notes  of  Various 
Authors,"  and  followed  it  in  1752  with  a  similar  volume 
including  Paradise  Regained  and  the  minor  pqems.  Newton's 
work  was  often  reprinted,  and  remained  the'  standard  edition 
till  it  was  superseded  by  that  of,  the  Rev.*  H.  J.  Todd  which 
first  appeared  in  1801.  The  final  issue  of  Todd  is  that  of 
1826  in  six  volumes  which,  in  spite  of  many  notes  which  are 
defective,  many  which  are  antiquated  and  some  which  are 
superfluous,  may  still  claim  to  be  the  best  library  edition  of 
Milton.  Among  the  best  of  those  which'  have  appeared  since 
are  Thomas  Keightley's,  published  in  1859,  which  contains 
excellent  notes,  and  Prof.  David  Masson's,  which  is  the  work 
of  the  most  learned  and  devoted  of  all  Milton's  editors.  Both 
of  these  have  the  advantage  of  Todd  in  some  respects; 
Keightley  in  acuteness  and  penetration,  Masson  in  com- 
pleteness of  knowledge.  But  no  single  editor's  work  can  be 
a  perfect  substitute  for  a  variorum  edition  like  that  of  Todd, 
giving  the  comments  and  suggestions  of  many  different 
minds.  The  most  complete  edition  of  Masson's  work  is  the 
final  library  one  in  three  volumes,  1890;  there  is  also  a 
convenient  smaller  issue,  based  on  this,  but  omitting  some 
of  its  editorial  matter.  It  was  last  printed  in  three  volumes 
1893.  It  contains  a  Memoir,  rather  elaborate  Introductions  to 
all  the  poems,  an  Essay  on  Milton's  English  and  Versification, 
and  reduced  Notes. 

A  text  with  Critical  Notes  by  W.  Aldis  Wright  was  issued 
by  the  Cambridge  University  Press  in  one  volume,  1903.  The 
text  of  the  earliest  printed  editions  of  the  several  poems  was 
reprinted  in  1900  in  an  edition  prepared  for  the  Clarendon 
Press  by  the  Rev.  H.  C.  Beeching. 

It  may  be  worth  while  adding  that  Milton's  Latin  and 
Italian  poems  were  translated  by  the  poet  Cowper  and 
printed  in  1808  by  his  biographer,  Hay  ley,  in  a  beautiful 
quarto  volume  with  designs  by  Flaxman.  These  translations 
are  reprinted  in  the  "  Aldine "  edition  of  Milton,  1826. 
Masson  has  also  given  translations  of  most  of  them  in  his 
Life  of  MiUon  and  in  his  1890  library  edition  of  the  Poems. 

Prose 

The  Prose  works  were,  of  course,  mostly  issued  as  books 
or  pamphlets  in  Milton's  lifetime.  They  were  collected  by 
Toland  in  three  volumes  folio,  1698.  There  are  several  more 
modern  editions ;  as  that  published  in  1806  in  seven  volumes 


252  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

with  a  Life  by  Charles  Symmons ;  that  of  Pickering,  who 
included  them  in  his  fine  eight-volume  edition,  The  Works 
of  John  Milton  in  Verse  and  Prose,  Edited  by  John  Mitford, 
1851 ;  and  that  in  Bohn's  Standard  Library,  in  six  volumes, 
edited,  with  some  notes  of  a  somewhat  controversial  char- 
acter, by  J.  A.  St.  John,  1848.  The  first  volume  of  a  new 
edition  edited  by  Sir  Sidney  Lee  appeared  in  1905.  One  of 
the  most  curious  of  the  prose  works,  the  De  Doctrina  Christiana 
or  Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine,  was  not  known  till  1823, 
when  it  was  discovered  in  the  State  Paper  Office.  It  was 
edited,  with  an  English  translation,  by  the  Rev.  C.  R.  Sumner 
in  1825  and  is  included  in  Bohn's  edition. 

Biography 

The  earliest  sources  for  the  biography  of  Milton,  outside 
his  own  works,  are  the  account  given  in  the  Fasti  Oxonienses 
of  Anthony  a  Wood,  1691,  the  Brief  Lives  of  John  Aubrey, 
and  the  Life  prefixed  by  the  poet's  nephew,  Edward  Phillips, 
to  an  edition  of  the  Letters  of  State,  printed  in  1694.  A  very 
large  number  of  Lives  of  Milton  have  been  written  since, 
based  on  these  materials  and  those  collected  from  a  few 
other  sources.  The  most  famous  and  in  some  ways  the  best, 
in  spite  of  its  unfairness,  is  that  of  Johnson,  to  be  found  in 
his  Lives  of  the  Poets.  The  best  short  modern  Life  is  Mark 
Pattison's  masterly,  though  occasionally  wilful,  little  book 
in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series.  For  the  library  and 
for  students  all  other  biographies  have  been  superseded  by 
the  great  work  of  David  Masson,  who  spared  no  labours  to 
investigate  every  smallest  detail  of  the  life  of  Milton  and  to 
place  the  whole  in  the  setting  of  an  elaborate  history  of 
England  in  Milton's  day.  The  value  of  the  book  is  some- 
what impaired  by  the  very  strong  Puritan  and  anti-Cavalier 
partisanship  of  the  writer;  and  its  style  suffers  from  an 
imitation  of  Carlyle.  But  nothing  can  seriously  detract 
from  the  immense  debt  every  student  of  Milton  owes  to  the 
author  of  this  monumental  biography  which  appeared  in 
seven  volumes,  1859-1894. 

An  interesting  critical  discussion  of  the  various  portraits 
representing  or  alleged  to  represent  Milton  is  prefixed  to  the 
Catalogue  of  the  Exhibition  held  at  Christ's  College  Cam- 
bridge during  the  Milton  Tercentenary  in  1908.  It  is  by 
Dr.  G.  C.  Williamson. 

Criticism 

A  poet  at  once  so  learned  and  so  great  as  Milton  inevitably 
Invited  criticism.     The  first  and  most  generous  of  his  critics 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  253 

was  his  great  rival  Dryden,  who,  in  a  few  words  of  the  preface 
to  The  State  of  Innocence,  published  the  year  after  Milton's 
death,  led  the  note  of  praise,  which  has  been  echoed  ever 
since  by  speaking  of  Paradise  Lost  as  "  one  of  the  greatest, 
most  noble  and  most  sublime  poems  which  either  this  age  or 
nation  has  produced."  The  next  great  name  in  the  list  is 
that  of  Addison,  who  contributed  a  series  of  papers  on  Milton 
to  the  Spectator  in  1712.  Like  all  criticism  except  the  work 
of  the  supreme  masters,  they  are  written  too  exclusively 
from  the  point  of  view  of  their  own  day  to  retain  more  than 
a  small  fraction  of  their  value  after  two  hundred  years  have 
passed.  But  they  are  of  considerable  historical  interest 
and  may  still  be  read  with  pleasure,  like  everything  written 
by  Addison.  A  less  sympathetic  but  finer  piece  of  work  is 
the  critical  part  of  Johnson's  famous  Life.  It  is  full  of 
crudities  of  every  sort,  such  as  the  notorious  remark  that 
"  no  man  could  have  fancied  that  he  read  Lycidas  with 
pleasure  had  he  not  known  the  author " ;  and  perhaps 
nothing  Johnson  ever  wrote  displayed  more  nakedly  the  narrow 
limits  of  his  appreciation  of  poetry.  But,  in  spite  of  all  its 
defects,  it  exhibits  its  writer's  great  gifts;  and  its  absolute 
and  unshrinking  sincerity,  its  half-reluctant  utterance  of 
some  of  the  truest  praise  ever  spoken  of  Milton,  its  profound 
knowledge  of  the  way  in  which  the  human  mind  approaches 
both  literature  and  life,  will  always  preserve  it  as  one  of  the 
most  interesting  criticisms  which  Milton  has  provoked. 
Johnson's  friend,  Thomas  Warton,  in  his  edition  of  the  minor 
poems  issued  in  1785,  led  the  way  to  an  understanding  of 
much  in  Milton  to  which  Johnson  and  his  school  were  entirely 
blind.  This  movement  has  continued  ever  since,  and  is  seen 
in  the  immense  influence  Milton  had  upon  the  poets  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  especially  upon  Wordsworth  and  Keats ; 
an  influence  of  exactly  the  opposite  sort  to  that  which  he 
exercised  with  such  disastrous  effect  upon  many  poets  of  the 
century  immediately  succeeding  his  own.  It  is  also  seen  in 
the  finer  intelligence  of  the  critical  studies  of  his  work.  These 
are  far  too  many  to  mention  here.  Among  the  best  are 
Hazlitt's  Lecture  on  Shakspeare  and  Milton  in  his  Lectures  on 
the  English  Poets  ;  Matthew  Arnold's  speech  at  the  unveiling 
of  a  Milton  memorial,  printed  in  the  second  series  of  his 
Essays  in  Criticism;  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  volume,  Milton, 
published  in  1900,  and  The  Epic,  by  Lascelles  Abercrombie, 
1914,  which  is  full  of  fine  and  suggestive  criticism  of  Milton. 
Milton's  Prosody  by  Robert  Bridges,  1901,  is  the  best  study  of 
the  metre  and  scansion  of  Milton's  later  poems,  especially  of 
Paradise  Lost. 


INDEX  TO  PRINCIPAL  PERSONS,  PLACES, 
AND  WORKS  MENTIONED 


Abercrombie,  L.,  136-7,  253 

Absalom  and  Achitophel,  105 

Achilles  in  Scyros,  246 

Addison,  Joseph,  77,  253 

Adonais,  125 

Ad  Patrem,  39-40. 

Mneid,  The,  150, 175, 196 

jEschylus,  245 

A  Kempis,  Thomas,  147 

Aldersgate  Street,  46 

All  for  Love,  243 

Allegro,  L',  41,  70,  93,  99,  106 

et  sqq.,  123,  239 
Anglesey,  Earl  of,  72,  82 
Annesley,  Arthur,  72 
Aquinas,  Thomas,  157 
Arbuthnot,  Epistle  to,  105 
Arcades,  41,  42 
Arcadia,  58 

Areopagitica,  44, 49, 64 
Arianism,  204 
Ariosto,  153 
Aristotle,  86.  200 
Arnold,  Matthew,  164,  253 
Arthurian    Epic    (planned),    45, 

148-9 
At  a  Solemn  Music,  13,  42,  97, 

100/103,  147 
Athens,  205-6,  209 
Aubrey,  John,  29,  252 

Barbican,  the,  54 

Baroni,  Leonora,  44-5 

Barrow,  Samuel,  82 

Beeching,  Rev.  H.  C,  251 

Bentley,  Richard,  250 

Bibliography,  250-3 

Blake,  Admiral,  57 

Bonn's  Standard  Library,  252 

Bow  Church,  25 

Bread  Street,  24,  75 

Bridges,  Robert,  26, 108, 222, 223, 

246,  253 
Brief  Lives,  252 
Buckingham,  Duke  of,  58 
Byron,  Lord,  90 

Cambridge,  28,  29,  30,  31-7,  39, 
42,  85,  120,  121,  124,  250, 
252 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  252 


Caroline,  Queen,  77 

Charles  I,  11,  28,  58,  59,  60,  63, 

64,67,71,72,86 
Charles  II,  47,  60,  65,  71,  73,  82, 

86 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  90,  111 
Christina,  Queen  of  Sweden,  60 
Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  28, 

29,120,121,124,252 
Clarendon,  Earl  of,  73 
Clarges,  Sir  Thomas,  72 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  206 
Comas,  13,  41,  42,  95,  100,  110, 

112-13  et  sqq.,  128,  242 
Constable,  135 
Coriolanus,  85 
Cowper,  William,  69,  251 
Criticisms,  252-3 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  55,  57,  63,  64, 

67,  68,  69,  71,  133,  139,  176 

Dante,  10,  11-12,  33,  120,  153-7 
Daphna'ida,  125 
Davenant,  William,  72 
Defensio  Regia,  60,  61 
Defensio  Secunda,  61 
De  Quincey,vThomas,  96 
Diodati,  Charles,  42,  124,  125 
Dimna  Commedia,  La,  120, 157 
Divorce  pamphlets,  50  et  sqq . 
Doctrina  Christiana,  De,  252 
Dorset,  Earl  of,  81 
Dowland,  Robert,  28 
Drayton,  Michael,  124 
Drummond,  William,  124,  135 
Dryden,    John,    80-2,    90,   103, 
104-5, 117,  241,  253 

Eikon  Basilike,  the,  57-8 

EiJconoklastes,  58,  61 

Electra,  The,  245 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  85 

English  Men  of  Letters  Series,  252 

Epic,  The,  253 

Epigrams,  Latin,  on  La  Baroni,  45 

Epitaph   on   the   Marchioness   of 

Winchester,  36,  37,  97,  103 
Epitaphium  Damonis,  124 
Essays  in  Criticism,  253 
Euripides,  77,  82,  245 
Excursion,  The,  136,  228-9 


254 


INDEX 


255 


Faerie  Queen,  The,  115 
Fairfax,  General,  139,  171 
Faithful  S/iepherdess,  The,  115 
Fasti  Oxonienses,  252 
Faust,  196 
Fire  of  London,  75 
Flaxman,  John,  251 
Fletcher,  John,  107,  115 
Florence,  43,  44,  46 
France,  43,  46,  59 

Galileo,  44,  45 

Qerusalemme  Conquistata  (Taaso), 

45 
Gibbons,  Orlando,  28 
Goethe,  J.  W.  von,  230,  244 
Gorges,  Mrs.,  125 
Grotius,  Hugo,  43 

Hamlet,  24,  243 

Hampden,  John,  171 

Hayley,  William,  251 

Hazlitt,  William,  253 

Hippolytus,  245 

History  of  Britain,  78 

Homer,  77,  82,  84,  89,  152,  153, 

155,171,230 
Horace,  69 

Horton,  37,  40,  41,  42,  111 
Hume,  Patrick,  250 

Iliad,  The,  154, 155, 157, 162 
Imitation,  The,  of  Christ,  147-8 
Indemnity,  Act  of,  72,  73,  74 
Independent  Army,  The,  55,  56 
Italian  travels,  43-6 

James  I,  58 

Jebb,  Prof.,  242-3,  244 

Job,  Book  of,  21,82 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  125,  126, 

160,  162,  175,  194,  196,  206, 

207,  227,  252,  253 
Jones,  Inigo,  16,  114 
Jonson,  Ben,  114, 115 

Keats,  John,  79,  90,  102,  110, 

125,  253 
Keightley,  Thomas,  251 
King,  Edward,  42,  91,  124,  125, 

127, 128-31 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  132 
Lawes,  Henry,  41, 82, 91, 116,  119 
Lawrence,  Henry,  69-70, 133 
Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  253 
Lee,  Sir  Sidney,  252 
Letters  of  State,  252 
Lives  of  Milton,  251,  252,  253 
Lives  of  the  Poets,  252 
London,  25, 49;  fire  of,  75 


Long  Parliament,  47,  63,  64, 171 
Lycidas,  13,  41,  42,  90,  91,  100, 
106,  123  et  sqq. 

Mackail,  J.  W.,  94-5,  206,  211 

Manso,  Giovanni,  45 

Marinf,  45 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  107 

Marvell,  Andrew,  69, '73 

Massacres  in  Piedmont,  sonnets 

on,  68, 133,  139, 140-1 
Masson.D.,  24,  52,  68,  73, 75, 251 
Medea.  The,  245 
Meredith,  George,  134 
Milton,  253 

Milton's  Prosody,  224,  253 
Milton's  relations : — 

Daughters,  11, 54, 69, 75-77, 218 
Deborah,  77-8 

Father,  27,  29,  37,  38-40,  42, 
43,  49,  54,  75 

Infant  son,  76 

Mother,  40 

Nephews,  46,  54,  61,  70,  252 

Wives — 
First,  see  Powell,  Mary. 
Second,  54,  69,  71 
Third,  54 
Mitford,  John,  252 
Monk,  General,  72 
Morley,  Thomas,  28 
Morrice,  — ,  72 
Moras,  69 

Napoleon  ,9, 139 
Newbolt,  Henry,  120 
Newton,  Thomas,  251 

Ode  on  the  Nativity,  35-6,  37,  91, 
93-4,  97,  98-103 

Odyssey.  The,  162,  196 

QZdipus  Coloneus,  237,  248 

GEdipus  Tyrannus,  233,  238,  243 

On  Attaining  the  Age  of  Twenty- 
three,  sonnet,  91, 133 

On  His  Blindness,  sonnet,  62-3, 
133 

On  the  Death  of  a  Fair  Infant,  35, 
97-9 

Orations,  34-5 

Othello,  150 

Ovid,  33,  77, 124 

Pamphlets,  49,  56,  69,  71 
Paradise  Lost,  13,  24,  25,  28,  44, 
47,  55,  71,  78,  79,  80,  82  88 
89,  90,  94,  95,  97, 101, 104,  106, 
112,  113,  118,  120,  123,  125, 
137, 142  et  sqq.,  196,  197  et  sqq., 
239, 240, 247,  248,250, 251, 253 


256 


INDEX 


Paradise   Regained,   13,   24,   44, 

78,  167,  196  et  sqq.,  227,  248, 

250,  25l 
Passion,  The,  103 
Pattison,  Mark,  131, 132, 197,  252 
Penseroso,  II,  41,  70,  93, 100, 106 

et  sqq.,  239 
Persce,  The,  245 
Petrarch,  33,  134, 135 
Phillips,  Edward,  252 
Pickering,  William,  252 
Pindar,  117 

Plato,  8,  9-10,  21,  111,  156 
Pleasure  Reconciled  to  Virtue,  115 
Poems,  editions  of,  250-1,  252 
Poetical  Works,  The,  of  Mr.  John 

Milton,  250 
Pope,  A.,  85,  90,  91, 105,  222,  223 
Portraits,  252 
Powell  family,  50,  53 
Powell,  Mary,  50-4,  69,  71 
Prelude,  The,  136,  228-9 
Pro  Populo  Anglicano   Defensio, 

60,  61 
Prometheus  the  Fire-Giver,  246 
Prometheus  Unbound,  102 
Prometheus  Vinctus,  21,  243,  245 
Prose  Works,  47  et  sqq.,  251-2 
Psalms,  the,  139-40 ;  paraphrases 

of,  95 
Puxcell,  Henry,  16 
Pym,  John,  171 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  198,  253 

Ranelagh,  Lady,  69 

Ready  and  Easy  Way  A,  to 
Establish  a  Free  Common- 
wealth, 65 

Reason,  The,  of  Church  Govern- 
ment. 13,  37 

Regicides,  the,  55,63,  71,  74 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  16 

Rome,  44,  209 

Rossetti,  Dante  G.,  133, 135 

St.  Brides'  Fleet  Street,  46 

St.  Giles'  Church,  Cripplegate,  79 

St.  John,  J.  A.,  252 

St.  Paul.  9, 144,  218 

St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  89, 193 

Salmasius,  59-62,  69,  218 

Samson  Agonistes,  13,  20,  24,  78, 

83,  99,  199,  219  etsqq.,  250 
Sansovino's  Library,  Venice,  193 
Saumaise,  see  Salmasius. 
Scudamore,  Lord,  43 


Shakspeare,  W.,  9, 14, 17,  32,  35, 
36, 80, 85, 90, 103, 114, 118, 145, 
166,  247  ;  sonnets,  133-5,  253 

Shelley,  P.  B.,  20,  29,  50,  79,  90, 
99,  102,  111,  125,  228 

Shelley,  Mrs.  P.  B.,  50 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  58,  98, 124, 135 

Skinner,  Cyriack,  62,  133 

Smithfield,  72 

Song  on  May  Morning,  36,  107 

Sonnets,  47,  54,  62-3,  68,  69,  91, 
106,  131  et  sqq. 

Sophocles,  82,  233,  245 

Spectator,  The,  253 

Spenser,  Edmund,  93,  97,  98, 
111,  115,  116,  124,  125,  153 

State,  The,  of  Innocence,  240,  253 

Statius,  157 

Strafford,  Earl  of,  171 

Sumner,  Rev.  C.  R.,  252 

Symmons,  Charles,  252 

Tasso,  Torquato,  45,  82,  153,  154 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  69,  90, 197 
Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates, 

56,  58,  75 
Theocritus,  124 
Todd,  Rev.  H.  J.,  251 
Toland,  John,  251 
Tonson,  Jacob,  250 
Treatise  of  Christian  Doctrine,  252 
Trinity  College  Library,  89,  250 
Turner,  J.  W.  M.,  16 
Tyburn,  71,  90 
Verrall,  A.  W.,  240 
Virgil,  82,  84,  89,  91,  124,  139, 

150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 163, 175 
Vita  Nuova,  La,  120 

Waller,  Edmund,  104 

Warton,  Joseph,  118.  126,  214 

Warton,  Thomas,  253 

Whitehall,  58,  70.  74,  219 

Williamson,  Dr.  G.  C.,  252 

Winchester,  Marchioness  of,  36 

Windsor,  37 

Windsor  Castle,  40 

Wood,  Anthony  a,  31,  35,  252 

Wordsworth,  W.,  26,  34,  79,  90, 
131, 133, 135, 137, 140,  141,206, 
227-30;  sonnets,  137-41,  253 

Works,  The,  of  John  Milton,  in 
Prose  and  Verse,  252 

Wren,  Sir  Christopher,  16,  89 

Wright,  W.  Aldis,  251 

Young,  Thomas,  27 


HOME  USE 

CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

MAIN  LIBRARY 


Thic  h«»i»  s-  J- 


ioed  below. 


- 

> 
O 

to 

CO 

33  f~  3J 

mom 
2  >2 

n  2  m 
S^S  > 

iv>zO   OB 

8«gR 

OflB  P 
2mm 

?*« 

>m  -I 

£*  3 

<  o 


m 


en 


£3  ^ 

33  W 


* 

i — 

HJ 

o£ 

o: 

1  ( 

2^ 

12 

m  nn 

T  ^ 

73 

m  ^ 

o: 

K3{ 

Cn 

ro 

Is 

D  • 

C< 

°~: 

-\ * 

°s 

<l 

3 

■ 

O 

CO 

■ 
• 

■ 

r 

■ 

00 
CD 

OCT    41983  -/ 


1 

/    Crenei 


LD21 — A-40wi-12, 
(S2700L) 


74 


Jeneral  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


III 


coaei^ioiB 


3/-37^ 


THj^JNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


